OMMA Hollywood – Do AJAX and Web 2.0 put Web Measurement back to Square 1.0?

Eric Picard of MSN talked about how we got to where we are with IAB standards in measurement of ad impressions, and where that might be heading now that new tools are out that blur the line between a page view and reload. Before the standard, there were 27 different ad servers with 13 different definitions of an impression! Now, technologies such as AJAX mess this all up. With the old standard, it took years to agree on one single definition of what an ad impression is, but at least it is a simple definition based on actions that can be understood by all parties. The current definition is pretty much that an impression is counted when an ad server has completely finished serving an ad to a client page. But when a page is never reloaded and a user interacts with it for 20 minutes straight, you should be able to serve more than one ad during that time frame.

So, if not reloading the page, how many impressions can you serve? As an industry, there is a need for an agreement on how, when, and if you reload the ads on a page that has user interaction but does not reload. MSN is addressing this now as the next generation of Hotmail will be more like Outlook Express, and there will not be new pages loaded as you use the site. So now how do they count pageviews and when so they refresh the ads? They came up with a time/activity formula that determines when they will refresh the ads on the page. Without a standard, they need to move ahead with something that is reasonable. Of course, disclosure to advertisers is also required so that they understand and agree to the way their ads are served.

Eric sees the new standard as a combination of user engagement with an appropriate amount of time to have the ad shown on a page. If nothing else, there needs to be a minimum standard for how long an ad must be on a page.

While he does not think this will be a quick process to come up with a new standard, Eric thinks that once this definition is solved that it will stand for a long time. Because the definition will have to be flexible, it will cover future developments.