An Audit Bureaux of Australia (ABA) report on online audience measurement shines the light on some of the common pitfalls and measurement mistakes uncovered by the audit process since the launch of the ABA Web Audit and Digital Watchdog Committee in mid 2009.
The ABA report highlights the common pitfalls and mistakes uncovered by the audit process since the launch of the ABA Web Audit and Digital Watchdog Committee, and warns online advertisers and media buyers to avoid the traps. Among the key issues is the practice of counting page impressions (or views) twice, through the use of a second tracking tag, to boost audience figures.
“The most common method to measure website traffic in Australia is through tracking tags installed on each web page,” says Paul Dovas, chief executive of the ABA. “Yet by simply placing an additional tag on each page, some publishers are counting their page views twice and claiming an unfair advantage over their competitors.”
The report reveals that some websites are over-representing their site traffic by counting pop-ups for their website, while others are counting pages before they finish loading by placing the tracking tag at the top of the page instead of the bottom.
Mr Dovas says the latter represented a breach of industry measurement rules as the page was being counted even though users may choose to shutdown the browser before it finished loading.
Another more publicised cheat for inflating website traffic is auto-refreshing. This refers to the practice of automatically reloading web pages at regular intervals, regardless of whether the page is being actively viewed by the user or not.
“This practice has been found to significantly inflate key audience metrics, including page views and session times,” says Dovas. “As a result, media buyers are spending money on display ads that are going unseen on background browser tabs and even unattended computers.”
Although more than 200 leading Australian sites have verified they are not using auto-refresh, some sites are continuing the practice and thus putting advertisers at risk. The report also found that some publishers are also counting website traffic from invalid sources, including syndicated content on external sites and non-human traffic such as spiders and bots.
Mr Dovas says the aim of the report was to help media buyers and advertisers understand the risks and educate website publishers who may be inadvertently inflating their audience figures.
The easiest way to identify credible website publishers is to look for the ABA green tick, which verifies a website has been through the ABA’s rigorous and independent web audit process.
Click here to view the report.
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, Circulations Audit Board, Paul Dovas
By: Philip Jenkinson
