Internet advertising measurement – Nielsen launches GRPs and shows where online media planning fails

Aug 10, 2011 | Uncategorized

Ever run an online display advertising campaign and been nervous about the audience? You’re not alone. Online media planning has the scope to target brilliantly, but too few agencies apply enough of the right techniques to ensure this happens all the times, resulting in under-performing campaigns and web ads not delivering the real ROI they […]

Ever run an online display advertising campaign and been nervous about the audience? You’re not alone. Online media planning has the scope to target brilliantly, but too few agencies apply enough of the right techniques to ensure this happens all the times, resulting in under-performing campaigns and web ads not delivering the real ROI they could. Now audience research measurement specialists Nielsen are launching an online display advertising measurement tool that uses Facebook data to give their flavour of gross rating points (GRPs) to advertisers. Following successful US pilots, Nielsen describe the results as ’astonishing’, with only a third of some campaigns hitting their target group. Weak online media planning has been a big risk in web marketing – and this could be one of the answers…


Nielsen is planning to implement a traditionally used advertising metric to measure the success of Facebook marketing.
It is widely thought that the ‘Gross Ratings Points’ system would give marketers a more concise way of measuring the success of their social media marketing efforts.
Whilst traditional online metrics such as click-through rates might provide some insight, they are not necessarily a conclusive metric to measure social media success by – as most campaigns are about awareness, rather than action.
This system measures the size of an audience – by the ‘frequency with which the audience sees a brand’.
Overall, a ‘Gross Ratings Points’ system could be extremely useful for businesses looking to determine whether changes to their existing marketing strategies are needed, or if they’re better off focussing their attention to a digital channel – other than Facebook.

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