The Online Publishers` Association (OPA) hopes the South African launch of the Nielsen/NetRatings SiteCensus in May will calm advertisers` concerns about the accuracy of information concerning demographics of the various Internet sites.
Formerly known as Red Sheriff, the Nielsen/NetRatings SiteCensus software offers an online resource for advertisers who are able to log into the system online and glean the latest demographics of visitors to sites, including age, income and the number of unique visitors.
"There has been a significant lack of trust between advertisers and online publishers about the kind of statistics that Web sites were putting forward," says OPA chairman Russell Yeo.
Yeo says the OPA hopes the industry can now put this "chequered past" behind it.
"That is why we chose the Nielsen system because it had a methodology that was commonly accepted."
The SiteCensus system uses tags to monitor hits on a Web site and issues a questionnaire to visitors on a quarterly basis.
Martin Filz, Nielsen/NetRatings business development officer, says the South African operations have gone extremely fast. Tagging of the OPA member sites was completed in four months and 30% of visitors completed the questionnaire, a much higher rate than the 10% usually received in other countries.
Filz says one of the issues Nielsen/NetRatings had to deal with was the complexity of the local online publishing industry.
"In SA, publishers operate a proportionately higher number of sites as compared to other countries. There are about 15 publishers operating about 79 sites compared to about 10 publishers operating 25 sites in a country such as New Zealand," he says.
Filz adds that the local industry is further complicated by the fact that some publishers do work for other publishers, as in the case of the "Singmein" site operated by M-Web on behalf of publishers such as the Mail & Guardian.
"Unravelling the complexity has been the major reason for the late start of the service, but it seems to have been sorted out now," says Yeo, who works for M-Web.
The service will go online from 3 May and there will be fee structures for OPA members, non-members and advertising agencies.
Share
