INTERNET MEDIA: ACNielsen rolls out NetRatings in Asia

ACNielsen is rolling out Nielsen//NetRatings in Asia-Pacific to

track audience, advertising and user activity on the Internet.

The new service, which aims to bring accountability to the Internet

advertising arena for the first time in the region, is being initially

launched in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Hong Kong, Taiwan and

Malaysia will follow later this year.

ACNielsen media director Steve Garton said Nielsen//NetRatings will be

able to rank banner ads and sites and compile demographic profiles.

"Through Nielsen//NetRatings, we can build up a composite of Internet

users in the markets we are studying on a real-time basis, so not only

will we have an independent audit of numbers, we will also have a record

of who they are, where they went and how much time they spent at certain

sites," he told MEDIA.

The tracking is achieved via a "super cookie", which will be installed

in home and office computers with the user's permission.

Data on what the user is doing on the Web will be sent by the super

cookie to a central collection site in the US, in between uploading and

downloading data streams.

Several thousand people per country were expected to take part in the

study, Mr Garton said.

They will be picked from ACNielsen's NetWatch, a broad-based media and

consumption survey.

"We must have a large sample size because there are so many sites people

can visit. This way even smaller sites will have a representation in the

study," Mr Garton said.

He added that there was no problem in recruiting people to take part in

the survey because the study does not involve any effort on the part of

participants.

"We only have to install the cookie. The participants don't have to do

anything after that. And, we give an assurance that individual

activities are never revealed to ensure privacy, but that's a key ethic

in our business in that we never identify an individual in our surveys."