Work surfing 'underestimated'

ADVERTISERS who will spend well over $1 billion this year to market their brands on the internet are using audience data that dramatically underestimates web use at work, key online publishers claim.

by Lara Sinclair

News Digital Media, Fairfax Digital and Telstra directories arm Sensis all say that data from Nielsen/Net Ratings fails to accurately measure traffic to news and information websites that peaks during the day.

Some publishers, who hold individual measurement contracts with Nielsen/Net Ratings understood to be worth millions of dollars, have asked the company to improve the quality of its at-work data.

The difference in traffic numbers to sites such as news.com.au, smh.com.au and whitepages.-com.au is believed to be material, or greater than 5 per cent, and could be more, publishers said.
Internet search and entertainment portals such as Google, Yahoo7 and Ninemsn are believed to be less affected.

"Fairfax, News and Sensis are in agreement," Sensis digital marketing chief Anthony Saines said. "The (Nielsen data) under-represents (traffic generated by) large businesses."
The publishers also believe the number of people whose online movements at work are measured is too small.

"A huge amount of our traffic comes through work," News Digital Media chief operating officer Nick Leeder said. "It seems drastically under-reported. If that's not being picked up, media buyers are buying advertising based on wrong data."

A Nielsen/Net Ratings spokesman said its Net View internet data measured the online activities of 4365 Australians in February. Of those, 4067 were measured at home and 385 were measured at their workplace (87 people were tracked in both).

The company supplies information such as the number of visits per person to various websites and the time spent on them.