At a time when some serious minds are beginning to challenge the notion of reach as the core metric for traditional media planning, a couple of Web-savvy heavyweights have teamed up to champion its
value for planning online media buys. DoubleClick and comScore Media Metrix Monday unveiled the findings of an online audience accumulation study they claim is the first to show the rate at which Web
sites build reach, or attract incremental unique visitors over time. The findings, and a companion white paper, "Internet Audience Dynamics," portend to be a new benchmark for reach-based planning for
online media buys, much the way Nielsen's periodic audience cume studies are for TV, or Mediamark Research Inc.'s audience accumulation studies have been for magazines.
The timing of the
initiative is ironic, considering that many on Madison Avenue have begun to question the value of reach as the basis of traditional media plans, and have been exploring alternatives such as ROI
(return on investment), consumer involvement, and engagement as more valid measures of media impact--measures that some already equate with the Internet.
Meanwhile, one of the study's key
findings is bound to set off a feud within the online marketplace that is akin to the battles that have been fought between TV's biggest players--the broadcast networks--and niche cable and
syndication outlets.
One of the study's key findings is that heavy Internet users (those who go online more than 19 days per month), who represent 38.8 percent of viewers, account for a
disproportionate 73 percent of all page views. This finding is significant because it suggests that the way to build reach online isn't necessarily via the Internet's biggest players--online's
so-called Big 3: America Online, MSN, and Yahoo!--but via smaller sites like CNN.com that tend to have a higher compositions of so-called "light" users who are less likely to be found on big Internet
portals. In fact, nearly half (49.3 percent) of CNN.com's unique user base comes from light users.
"Light Internet users are the key to reach-build," acknowledges Erwin Ephron, a consultant and
leading authority on media planning practices. He said the research suggests that planners should alter their online strategies to "selective dispersion" across many Web sites.
The white paper
also suggests that advertisers and Web publishers would both benefit if publishers sold their inventory based on audience usage patterns. These patterns vary by day of the week, time of the day, and
content updates. However, as yet, most Web publishers do not sell their inventory via dayparts, or scheduled time segments. The only way for advertisers to effectively buy time segments is via
third-party ad servers like DoubleClick and its rivals Atlas DMT and Advertising.com.
Meanwhile, Ephron says the online audience accumulation study could have implications for planning across
media by creating a common reach metric across online, TV, and print media. "The study "enables ordinary media planners to think about the Internet. They can now apply the same principles here that
they do in other media," he says, adding: "This seems to me a very big step forward. It's very reassuring that the principles used are the same as TV and other media."
DoubleClick's "Internet
Audience Dynamics" study is based on the actual observed Internet behavior of comScore Media Metrix's panel of 1.5 million Web users. The data provided is from February 2004, and is projected for the
total U.S. Internet population. DoubleClick said this is a one-time-only report.