Nielsen Wins U.K. Audience Measurement Contract, Beating Out Rivals

An industry-backed measurement firm chose Nielsen as its official partner for a new online audience research initiative, leaving rivals GfK and ComScore out in the cold.

The U.K. Online Measurement Company (UKOM) is supported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of Online Publishers. It is designing audience metrics for planning and buying online media in the U.K. The resulting service, called Audience Planning System (APS), will aim to establish an publisher-endorsed benchmark for online audience measurement comparable to those already in place in for mediums such as print, TV, and radio.

Speaking with ClickZ News, IAB U.K. President and CEO Guy Phillipson said the system should help drive online as a branding medium, giving confidence to online media buyers. “Brand spenders have been asking for robust, comparable audience and demographic data for the online world, as they do already for other mediums. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re glad it’s finally coming to fruition,” he said. APS has been in the works in one format or another since 2006.

Essentially, data for the system will be gathered through a tweaked version of Nielsen’s NetView panel, which tracks the online behavior of 35,000 users, and delivers metrics for sites with upwards of 50,000 unique visitors a month.

Nielsen Online’s communications director, Alex Burmaster, insisted the APS product was more than just the company’s NetView product with the an industry stamp of approval. He said it had been “designed in response to specific industry demand.” IAB’s Phillipson said Nielsen’s existing panel was close to meeting UKOM’s brief out of the box, but that the new offering will feature richer data on users’ at work surfing behavior, as well as improved demographic information.

The service will be majority-funded by media owners, with agency groups paying a subscription fee. It officially launches in January, with the first set of data available the following month.