IAB Australia Gives Nielsen Exclusive Measurement Contract

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Nielsen has struck a deal with the Australian Interactive Advertising Bureau to become its exclusive provider of online audience measurement for the next two years.

By signing a deal with an exclusive metrics supplier, IAB Australia seems to be placing the benefits of metrics consistency over competition. Advertisers and publishers will no longer have the leverage over metrics companies that comes with having vendors compete for their business. But the trade-off is that the industry as a whole will now be reporting its metrics in consistent units, making Internet media buying more compatible with other platforms.

Nielsen Online Ratings offers a people-based - rather than browser-based - measurements system. IAB hopes this will make it easier to track users' behavior from the Web to mobile.

"For years, media planners and buyers and marketers, have asked for standardized measurement and metrics for online audiences and websites and a media planning and buying currency," said Paul Fisher, CEO of IAB Australia, in a statement. "Nielsen’s Online Ratings hybrid measurement methodology is a significant and world-leading step towards that goal."