• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, June 17, 2005

One of the first perks you accept as a media buyer is a complimentary subscription to magazines pitching your accounts. The first major decision in your career is then deciding whether to give your work or home address when the offer is tendered. Giving your home address feels like you are getting away with something and if you still live "at home," a free copy of Vanity Fair every month becomes something your parents brag about to their friends.

Being placed on "comp" for a magazine worthy of paying for was a sign that read, "You're important." The more prestigious the magazine, the more important you felt.

When I jumped over to media sales, I was reintroduced to this perk. What I met was an effective marketing tool well disguised as a gesture of recognition. And when my boss emphatically told us to "pick up the phone and add someone to the comp list" as a way to stimulate our sales activity, the feeling of importance I attached to this perk as a buyer made me feel dumb and I returned to my desk and sat down a salesperson.

In online advertising, unless a Web site has a significant number of paid subscriptions (aka WSJ.com), placing clients on "comp" does not translate across mediums. Ironically however, online advertising can learn a lot from how print publishers account for their distribution of complimentary copies.

These copies, not surprisingly, do not count towards a magazine's rate base and circulation delivery. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), magazines provide the number of comp copies distributed on their "pink sheet" but this total is explained as "non analyzed and non paid." This means these copies do not factor into the reported rate base and circulation delivery of the magazine.

Despite the small number relative to a magazine's total circulation, counting comp copies would theoretically extend the reach of an advertiser (albeit minimally) which would lower the effective paid cost per thousand (CPM) inappropriately.

In online advertising, publishers generate page views (and impressions) on their own Web site from inside their own building. Many online publishers claim to have firewalls that prevent these impressions from contributing to their reported total. I spoke with Yahoo! about this issue, and they confirmed that their firewall prevents the counting of page views (and clicks) generated by their own employees.

But what about ad agency generated page views? And what about publishers not named Yahoo!? I would bet a million impressions that we can come up with a list of publishers who do not accurately prevent the counting of page views and impressions generated inside their own building from counting towards their reported totals for campaigns their advertisers have paid for.

So what is the big deal if a few thousand illegitimate impressions count towards a campaign of 10 million? The mathematical impact may be negligible, but the perception is not.

Even if the magazine industry lost their professional minds and tried to count comp copies towards their circulation delivery, there is a third-party auditor (ABC) in place to ensure proper professional protocol. I am not suggesting print publisher's circulation practices are not worthy of the recent scrutiny they have endured, but when it comes to accounting for complimentary subscriptions, they got that one right.

Why should online advertisers pay for one single page view generated by employees of the companies they pay to create, place, and run their advertising? And why hasn't there been wider adoption of third-party auditing of Web site traffic delivery by the online advertising community?

It has been my experience that when you raise issues like these with those in the online industry, the default answer is "we're not like other mediums, we're new" as if somehow this excuses behavior that deviates from more established mediums.

Online advertising is still relatively new. However, selling advertising is not. The pace of online advertising's growth is astounding, and the collective focus on what's "next" should be admired, but the medium has failed to absorb basic lessons older and wiser mediums are willing to share.