Yahoo! Launches New Impression Counting System

The global Internet company Yahoo! Inc. (www.yahoo.com) announced the implementation of a new measurement and reporting platform to provide a new level of accountability to the measurement of online graphical advertising. Yahoo!'s new counting technology is a proprietary measurement and reporting platform that only counts and reports the ad impression after the ad has been displayed on the page.

"We believe Yahoo!'s new platform raises the bar significantly for media measurement by employing a standard that is not available in any other media – to measure even more accurately if an advertisement has been viewed by a consumer," said Todd Teresi, vice president of operations, Yahoo! and chair of the IAB task force on audience measurement guidelines.

The platform is available in the U.S. now and will be broadly deployed across Yahoo!'s global network in early 2006.

Yahoo!'s platform provides additional assurance that ads are being delivered to users' browsers and reporting errors are minimized. Yahoo! served as Chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Global Internet Ad Impression Measurement task force to bring this new standard of ad impression measurement to market and offer advertisers an ad delivery technology option which previously did not exist.

Yahoo! is one of the first publishers to implement the new impression measurement standard. Yahoo!'s measurement platform is certified by the Media Ratings Council (MRC), a leading media ratings auditor.

Providing advertisers with accurate measurement standards which are consistent across multiple websites where a campaign may run has become crucial to the long-term success of Internet advertising. To do this, Internet companies must come to a consensus on those standards.

The IAB is now the first organization to launch a global measurement standard that has been accepted by all the key online advertising industry stakeholder organizations in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.

"Yahoo!'s initiative in developing improved measurement tools and simplifying the reporting process is a major step towards more accurate standards and accountability for marketers," said Nigel Morris, chief executive officer, ISOBAR.

The IAB guidelines and subsequent publisher implementation mark the first time that any advertising medium has developed a measurement standard that measures the ad itself as delivered to a consumer, versus other media that measure the programming or content in which the ad is embedded.

"We're very proud of the industry's continued adoption of these guidelines as we work together to standardize this new medium," said Greg Stuart, chief executive officer, IAB. "Yahoo! especially has been front and center in its leadership and support of the IAB.