• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, May 6, 2002

Traditional Metrics for Online Ad Planning

Dispersing an ad campaign of four million impressions from one site to four sites will increase the number of visitors reached by 36 percent to 67 percent, says a new report by Media Metrix to be presented to advertising planning leaders in interactive media at the iMedia Summit May 13-16.

The report concludes that advertising buys across fewer online networks are often far less efficient than buys across several networks. In a quantitative study of three popular categories of ad-supported Internet sites - news, finance and music - Media Metrix found that placing a four-week ad campaign of four million impressions on any one of the leading four sites would reach an audience of 1.4 million to 1.9 million unique visitors.

However, spreading those four million impressions across three of the top four sites within each category substantially broadens the audience reach from 2.2 million to 2.5 million unique visitors. Moreover audience reach can be increased up to an additional seven percent by spreading the same four million ad impressions to four sites.

"The latest data findings confirm that the more you target your audience or ad buy, the greater the likelihood is that you'll need to move away from simple audience-reach metrics and toward more sophisticated reach-and-frequency metrics commonly applied in traditional media," said Mainak Mazumdar, head of research and product management for Media Metrix.

Mazumdar said that "advertisers looking to increase frequency in a campaign may very well lean toward advertising on fewer sites. The reality on the Internet (however) is that target audiences are often fragmented across multiple sites, thereby limiting the ability of one or just a few sites to reach a greater number of defined audience members efficiently."

Average Audience Reached with a
Four-Million-Impression Ad Campaign August 2001
At home/work combined in the US (Millions of Unique Visitors Reached for Each Category of Site)

Number of Sites Advertised on	News	Finance	Music
One site only	1.88	1.42	1.39
Two of four sites	2.22	1.83	1.87
Three of four sites	2.46	2.08	2.16
Four of four sites	2.55	2.22	2.32
% Difference Between One and Four Sites	36%	56%	67%

Source: Jupiter Media Metrix Find out more here.