First Digital Media (FDM) received the ABA green tick in late January 2011 following the company’s decision to remove auto-refresh from all titles. They join publishers including Realestate.com.au, SBS, Allure Media and Austereo in responding to the Media Federation of Australia’s call for industry reform of this practice.
FDM’s titles include Crikey, Business Spectator, SmartCompany, Eureka Report, Climate Spectator and Startup Smart. This recent development has increased the number of websites on the Audit Bureaux of Australia safe list to 210, with each making a stand against auto-refresh.
Auto-refreshing of pages is a major concern for media buyers because it can cause dollars to be wasted on ads that automatically refresh without being viewed. Use of auto-refresh can also severely inflate the metrics used by media buyers to evaluate website and campaign performance, thus not rewarding those attaining excellent results while sticking to a level playing field.
“We are delighted that First Digital Media, along with all our websites, has been accredited through the ABA’s audit process,” said Oliver Hinton, the CEO of First Digital Media. “We certainly look forward to continuing to work with advertisers who expect their media partners to deliver advertising and reporting to industry best practice.”
Paul Dovas, the CEO of the ABA welcomed the move. “First Digital Media joins a growing list of publishers that have stepped up to their responsibility and committed to ending auto-refresh.” He added, “We are also encouraged to see increasing numbers of audited publishers embracing the ABA green tick as a meaningful symbol and using it on their websites, media kits and email signatures to show advertisers they are meeting the highest standard for their audience data and for their measurement practices.”
The ABA web audit verifies audience metrics for compliance of measurement rules on digital properties and then reports these audit results in both the ABA and Nielsen media-planning directories. Since the introduction of the web audit service 19 months ago, the ABA has made significant progress addressing issues such as auto-refresh and is currently working with some of the larger publishers to assist them with the technical changes required for compliance.
More than 210 websites are now Audit Bureaux of Australia audited, with Business and IT being the two best represented categories. Click below to view the complete safe site list: www.auditbureau.org.au/webauditmembers.php
Advertisers can also access all ABA print and web data by registering for online access at: www.auditbureau.org.au
Source: First Digital Media, Oliver Hinton; Audit Bureau of Australia; Paul Dovas.
By: Philip Jenkinson
