Australia’s peak trade association for online advertising, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia has appointed The Nielsen Company as exclusive preferred supplier of online audience measurement.

The appointment represents a significant step forward for the digital advertising industry, bringing to the online industry the same level of standardisation in audience measurement enjoyed by traditional media.

In choosing Nielsen Online Ratings, IAB Australia is indicating that people-based, rather than browser-based, metrics are the best audience measurement system for the online industry, a move which allows it to be measured comparably to other media in providing online reach and frequency analyses.

“The announcement today marks the dawn of a new era in online audience measurement,” said Paul Fisher, CEO of IAB Australia, “This is without a doubt the most significant step to date in an ongoing process to evolve and improve how we measure online audiences and advertising. Online will now have the ability to offer ‘apples with apples’ media planning capabilities and it will streamline audience measurement for marketers, media planners and buyers, publishers, networks.”

The eight-month tendering process was strongly supported by Media Federation Australia and the Australian Association of National Advertisers, with global digital agency MediaMind also welcoming the appointment: “MediaMind applauds IAB’s ongoing efforts to provide Australia’s advertising community with reliable and accurate audience measurement data,” said Caroline Bollaci, country manager for MediaMind Australia and New Zealand. “By providing more reliable and robust metrics, beyond just panel data, advertisers will gain more confidence in online reporting, which in turn will spur growth of the digital advertising industry as a whole.”