INTERNET MEDIA: ACNielsen rolls out NetRatings in Asia

<p>ACNielsen is rolling out Nielsen//NetRatings in Asia-Pacific to </p><p>track audience, advertising and user activity on the Internet. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>The new service, which aims to bring accountability to the Internet </p><p>advertising arena for the first time in the region, is being initially </p><p>launched in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Hong Kong, Taiwan and </p><p>Malaysia will follow later this year. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>ACNielsen media director Steve Garton said Nielsen//NetRatings will be </p><p>able to rank banner ads and sites and compile demographic profiles. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"Through Nielsen//NetRatings, we can build up a composite of Internet </p><p>users in the markets we are studying on a real-time basis, so not only </p><p>will we have an independent audit of numbers, we will also have a record </p><p>of who they are, where they went and how much time they spent at certain </p><p>sites," he told MEDIA. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>The tracking is achieved via a "super cookie", which will be installed </p><p>in home and office computers with the user's permission. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Data on what the user is doing on the Web will be sent by the super </p><p>cookie to a central collection site in the US, in between uploading and </p><p>downloading data streams. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Several thousand people per country were expected to take part in the </p><p>study, Mr Garton said. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>They will be picked from ACNielsen's NetWatch, a broad-based media and </p><p>consumption survey. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"We must have a large sample size because there are so many sites people </p><p>can visit. This way even smaller sites will have a representation in the </p><p>study," Mr Garton said. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>He added that there was no problem in recruiting people to take part in </p><p>the survey because the study does not involve any effort on the part of </p><p>participants. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"We only have to install the cookie. The participants don't have to do </p><p>anything after that. And, we give an assurance that individual </p><p>activities are never revealed to ensure privacy, but that's a key ethic </p><p>in our business in that we never identify an individual in our surveys." </p><p><BR><BR> </p>