U.K. Panel to Unite Web Data with CPG Sales Data

GfK NOP Media has announced the launch of a U.K. panel combining online and offline media consumption with consumer purchase information. The market research firm says it will help advertisers better gauge campaign effectiveness and return on investment, and allow easy comparisons between online and offline media channels.

The Media Efficiency Panel will unite CPG sales data from TNS’s Worldpanel service — for which panelists report their own purchases — with online behavioral data collected via technology from Nurago. TV, radio, and print media consumption will then be monitored via regular questionnaires.

To kick start the panel, and presumably help promote online effectiveness among CPG advertisers, Google will also fund a series of pilot studies with advertisers and agencies using data from the panel. Shuvo Saha, head of Google’s Fast Moving Consumer Goods business, said the search giant was “keen to learn with advertiser and agency partners about the effects of Internet advertising in the context of the full media mix.”

A similar panel was launched by GfK NOP in Germany in 2008, and has already been used by large CPG firms such as Procter & Gamble, Nestle, and Johnson & Johnson.

Gary Roddy, research director at GfK NOP Media said the panel, in conjunction with tools such as those being developed by the U.K. Online Measurement Company (UKOM), should help drive online spend by highlighting its effectiveness versus other channels. UKOM itself is set to launch its Audience Planning System in January, which promises to establish a publisher-endorsed benchmark for online audience measurement comparable to those already in place for traditional media.

The new GfK panel also follows a recent trend of tracking offline and online data together in attempts to better understand the impact of digital marketing in the offline world. Google, for example, recently entered into a data partnership with TiVo in an attempt to measure TV ad viewing more precisely.