• by Tig Tillinghast , May 9, 2002

In the past few weeks, things started looking up for online media buying. First, Jupiter Media Metrix (JMM) introduced its very useful online research tool, a site profiler called AiM. This service allows planners and buyers to determine which sites index highest among all sorts of behavioral, psychographic and demographic factors. And only a few days ago, DoubleClick divested itself of the other major site audience-profiling product, @Plan. DoubleClick sold it off to NetRatings, finally correcting what had been a strange conflict of interest ever since the network of sites first purchased the research tool some years ago.

Useful Tools

In terms of usefulness to the media buyer, these tools bring a new level of accuracy to audience searches. Rather than giving subscribers a hodge-podge database of individual site profiles, these services allow the buyers to make queries directly against their campaign targets’ determining characteristics. Instead of purchasing sites based on broad audience characteristics, like gender and age, buyers can now determine which sites attract the most divorcees, or retirees, or people who voted Republican in the last election. It’s a finer level of audience resolution.

The AiM advantage comes from its connection to the Media Metrix panel data. With tens of thousands of monitored panel users, the query tool provides very up-to-date data over thousands of sites. Hopefully in the near future, NetRatings will manage to marry @Plan’s product with their own highly respected panel system.

Competition and Conflicts

Only a few weeks ago, NetRatings and JMM had their proposed merger kyboshed by federal regulators. While this brought JMM to the brink of insolvency, it now appears as though buyers will potentially have two robust products to choose from.

Prior to the merger’s demise, it appeared buyers would be limited to one mega research company, with the unattractive alternative option of using DoubleClick’s version of @Plan. This isn’t to say that @Plan isn’t a fine product as it is, but buyers were put in the position of using data generated by one of the major media sellers. If this had been in the world of television, it would have been as though the data that determined who made the buy was provided by CBS.

Playing Around

After tricking the JMM folks to give me password access to their AiM product, I put it through its paces. I was impressed with what I found. Of the syndicated site research tools out there, I have to give AiM my nod as the most useful to date.

By combining various queries, buyers can get to all sorts of interesting information. For instance, by combining the criterion of planning to change marital status within 6 months and the criterion of being a married person, we can find out which sites attract people who intend to leave their spouses. This isn’t the kind of data that buyers can guess at by using their “media gut.” And, aside from being a sordidly interesting query to run as an example, this is actually a useful audience for appliance makers and other companies. Whether KitchenAid knows it or not, its site is on the list, and it would understand better why certain people are buying dishwashers if it plumbed the depths of the AiM database.

And, frankly, the tool can be a lot of fun. I spent a couple hours satisfying my own curiosity about many issues. For example, it turns out that people who visit the Apple site are about half as likely to be thinking of retiring soon relative to those who visit the Microsoft site. While the Microsofties join alternative political parties about as often as the average American, the Apple visitors are about 50% as likely to do so. The people who are most likely to upgrade to broadband in the next year are those who are visiting sites with streaming video, like Barelylegalfeed.com.

The tool strains the bounds of being a mere media research tool and broaches into the category of a social science breakthrough. The categories of query are fairly limited today – for instance, we can find out how athletic certain users are, but JMM hasn’t yet asked panelists about family relationships or political attitudes. But the system exists now for these other lines of inquiry to be fielded and added to the system.

While some of this type of data exists today in the world of magazines and television, none of those research products use the relevant media itself as the vehicle of inquiry. None are as accurate or as up-to-date. This may be the beginning of the time when we can easily know more about online users and media vehicles than we can know about those in any other medium.