• by Jim Meskauskas , March 27, 2002

On March 19th, The International Academy of Arts and Sciences and Nielsen//NetRatings announced they would launch the first-ever Internet Sweeps Month in May 2002.

“With millions of new people coming on the Internet for the first time every day, we felt it was more important than ever to recognize the Web sites that are attracting users and setting the standard for the industry,” Tiffany Shlain, founder and CEO, The Webby Awards, was quoted in the press release.

In the same press release, Sean Kaldor, VP, Analytics and Corporate Marketing for NetRatings was attributed the following: “The May Internet Sweeps Month highlights what’s exciting on the Web by providing consumers with the most popular sites online. It also gives sites an incentive to develop their best content, drawing surfers in for a visit.”

Yes, that's right. This was in a press release for all to read.

No, I'm not making that up! Really, I'm not that creative.

Now, Tiffany Shlain I can forgive, since she isn't an advertising person. I went to college with Tiffany, and in those days, she was an aspiring filmmaker with a dog named 'Haiku.' She is a producer and artist, but not a marketer by discipline. When the Webby's first began in 1997 as a promotional device for The Web Magazine, online advertising ratings, metrics, standards, and rich media were all just phantoms; notes from underground written by marketing and advertising geeks.

But Sean Kaldor? I must believe that he knows something about advertising and its provenance. He and NetRatings must understand what advertising research is, how it is performed, and what challenges there are that face the Internet as a measurable ad medium. Sweeps?! How could they not only endorse, but also plume this anathema before the community?

No one, and I mean NO ONE who works in advertising, and particularly media, thinks sweeps is a good idea. Sweeps in broadcast is the most lame-brained scam still in practice in advertising, but laziness and inertia will ensure that Sweeps will remain a part of broadcast TV for a long time to come. With digital cable and advances in technology, I can't see any good reason why Sweeps would remain a practice, but I guess broadcast TV venues and media buying warehouses just can't accept the fact that 5,000 person sample bases checked in on 4 times a year is not the best way to base conclusions about what 260 million Americans are up to. It is almost as bad an idea as upfront buying, but I don't want to get started on that now.

Be that as it may...

Sweeps in online is an even DUMBER idea. I can actually measure real audience on the Web (whether or not that is being done adequately is another issue, but there is no question about its possibility). Why do I need to proxy my "viewership" when I can tell you exactly what that viewership is each and every day of the week?

It may very well be that perhaps something like this is being done in an attempt to find analogy with offline, but there are so many other, better, more sensible ways to do that than do take an already abhorrent practice and apply it to this new medium.

The march of folly continues...

The thing is, "sweeps" aren't necessary to accomplish any of these things in online. There is no reason why sizes of audiences or their "viewing" habits can't be had without resorting to programming gimmicks or frail ratings practices that rely on temporal snapshot samples of a site's audience and its engagement. Everything we need to move towards audience-based media currency or to determine impact of advertising online we already have. Sweeps won't elucidate the value of dayparts nor allow for a better understanding of how online advertising impacts a brand nor how online media impacts a larger media mix.

What we need from companies like NetRatings is research leadership. If we can't get that, then we certainly need collaboration with organizations committed to conducting research. Organizations like the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the IAB, and the OPA (Online Publisher's Association) are all producing information that the industry is finding useful and applicable. Instead, NetRatings is producing press.

"Sweeps" is not going to do anything that we can't already do, given motive and will, and it won't make what we've been clamoring for in online advertising seem suddenly more logical. Sweeps is a gimmick, not a methodology.