Online advertisers in call for third-party validation

<p>Online advertisers are increasingly demanding independent, third </p><p>party validation of user population figures, click-through rates and </p><p>demographic data provided by website operators. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>It comes amid uncertainty about the reliability of some of the </p><p>information currently being released to advertisers and agencies by Web </p><p>companies, because of talk that numbers and data can easily be </p><p>manipulated. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>In addition, marketers want more precise demographic data of the types </p><p>of people surfing to specific web sites or portals to ensure that their </p><p>ad was actually reaching their intended target market. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Agencies have said that data manipulation did not seem to be a </p><p>widespread or growing problem. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>However, they revealed that although they have come across only a few </p><p>"bad apples", those few cases - including the discovery of "robot" that </p><p>surfed the net and whose sole job was to artificially bump-up </p><p>click-through rates at a certain site - were enough to raise question </p><p>marks about figures provided by website operators. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Grey Interactive MD Vivian Lau said clients were putting on the pressure </p><p>for greater Internet accountability simply because the online budgets </p><p>were increasing. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"Gone are the days when advertisers were simply scrambling to be among </p><p>the first to advertise on the Internet. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"Now it has become more sophisticated. They are looking for very </p><p>specific data such as the number of people clicking onto their banner ad </p><p>and their demographic profile in order to calculate the CPM," she told </p><p>MEDIA. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>She said that research such as Nielsen//NetRatings now being launched in </p><p>Asia-Pacific - but only in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia - </p><p>or Web audits like the one unveiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers would go a </p><p>long way to instill confidence among advertisers. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>However, Ms Ruth Stubbs, Euro RSCG media director, direct and digital, </p><p>Grand China, said research and audits should have been set up a year </p><p>ago. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>"The maturity of Asia is ramping up very quickly and we all could see </p><p>that a year ago, but independent research is not keeping pace," she </p><p>said. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Currently, companies such as 24/7 Media and Space Asia Media guarantee </p><p>that data released by Web operators is accurate. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>But, Grey's Ms Lau said: "There isn't anything out there that can give </p><p>us an accuracy of within plus or minus five per cent." </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>She said that the typical online campaign used about five websites and </p><p>if a campaign did poorly it was incumbent on the agency to look through </p><p>all the sites one-by-one to find out what went wrong. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>The result is that advertisers have shifted their focus to </p><p>outcome-oriented ads, because, according to Space Asia MD Colin </p><p>McIntosh, advertising on the Net is not cheap. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>The average banner ad costs between US$10 to $35 every one </p><p>thousand times a page downloads, "so it can become very expensive if a </p><p>site claims half-a-million downloads a month". </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>However, he stressed that audit and tracking software was in place to </p><p>ensure that nothing underhand occurs. </p><p><BR><BR> </p>