The Nielsen Company has been selected by UKOM, the UK Online Measurement body, as its official partner in creating the country's first online campaign planning tool.

Set to launch in January 2010, the UKOM Audience Planning System (APS) powered by Nielsen is intended to provide advertisers and agencies with the online reach and frequency metrics needed for media planning and buying.

"For the first time, advertisers and agencies will be able to confidently plan campaigns using industry-approved audience data comparable with traditional media, such as TV and press," said Guy Phillipson, CEO of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and director of UKOM.

The UK's online ad industry is still far smaller than in the U.S. According to the IAB (British version), the UK display ad market in 2008 amounted to £637M (about $1 billion), up 90% from 2005. However, the category's growth has lagged behind the other two major forms of online advertising -- search (up 159%) and classifieds (up 173%).

The planning system, based on Nielsen's NetView syndicated service in the U.S., is aimed at encouraging advertisers to boost online spending. It will supply UK online audience data for sites with at least 50,000 unique visitors a month, and more.

Nielsen's audience measurement tools already serve as a standard in countries including France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, China and South Africa. Expanding its global presence, Nielsen also announced earlier this month the acquisition of KoreanClick, the leading Web measurement company in South Korea.

In the U.S., the problem for online advertisers may be too many planning tools, not too few. To help marketers and agencies sort through the host of different ad technologies, Forrester analyst Emily Riley said in a post Tuesday that she is planning "some major research" on the subject.

"So often though, marketers are totally overwhelmed by the 'stack' of different technologies they need to master in order to be fully functional," she wrote.

The research will encompass ad servers, RFP tools, inventory management systems, and billing and reconciliation methods, among other topics. No word on when the report will be out, but Riley is welcoming input.

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