Atlas DMT's Online Planning Tool Speaks to Traditional Advertisers

If there’s one thing that deters traditional advertisers from spending more online, it’s the language barrier. Terms such as “impressions” and “unique users” are like Greek to many media buyers and planners. “Reach,” “frequency” and “GRPs” are words they understand.

In response to this lack of communication, ad technology company, Atlas DMT has unveiled the latest version of Atlas GRP and Reach Forecaster 3.0, its Gross Rating Points (GRPs) planning tool for online media. The software translates impression levels into reach and frequency numbers for specific demographic groups for over 400 publisher sites by combining panel data from comScore Media Metrix with third party ad serving data. This methodology has been endorsed by the Advertising Research Foundation as the “right way to do reach and frequency,” says Atlas DMT’s director of analytics and the Atlas Institute, Young-Bean Song.

“People are over the methodology,” he adds. “So next year, I think it’s going to be all about how planners and buyers will actually use these tools to plan campaigns.”

This next step in the evolution of the product takes Atlas DMT out of the loop, allowing media planning and buying clients to directly access the software as a stand-alone, desktop application. In the past, a more “cumbersome” process took place on Atlas DMT’s machines, according to Song. The new software is available to any advertiser or agency, whether or not Atlas DMT is the company’s ad serving provider.

As integration of offline and online advertising becomes the industry standard, the ability to compare all media placements using a common denominator has become imperative. At this point, advertisers realize the question is no longer “should I allocate dollars to online media?” It’s “how much?” After all, when an advertiser decides to transfer $1 million from offline placements towards online ones, some way of determining what’s lost and what’s gained is needed.

“In traditional TV, the answer is in GRPs,” states Song. In addition to GRPs, reach and frequency, the new Atlas software determines Targeted Rating Points (TRP’s) and Cost Per Point (CPP).

The product can be used to plan for reach and frequency based on specific goals. For instance, an advertiser may wish to run a few impressions throughout a wide range of sites over a short period of time in order to create a broad reach. Or, if branding is the goal, the tool enables advertisers to assess how many people can be reached based on a particular frequency level and a particular site. Cost for marginal reach can be pinpointed as well. As noted by Song, the software determines the cost of reaching a specific number of users for a specific site or set of sites to “ensure maximum reach for the lowest amount of dollars.”

Song expects the 30 agencies that currently use the Atlas GRP and Reach Forecaster, including Tribal DDB, Foote, Cone & Belding and TBWA\Chiat\Day, to “quickly adopt” this latest version. He also foresees an increase in the number of clients employing the software since Atlas DMT no longer must be involved in the process.

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