Tacoda Upgrades Audience Measurement Tools

By: Carl Sullivan Tacoda Systems is rolling out an upgrade of its Audience Management Software at beta-test sites Advance Internet Inc., CondeNet, and weather.com, according to President Dave Morgan, founder and former CEO of Real Media, the online advertising technology group.

The company said it expects to sign two more major media companies in the coming weeks. Tacoda's software is designed to help online publishers accurately measure their audiences and their behavior.

Tacoda then integrates that data with other systems, including customer and subscriber lists to generate a single, enterprise-wide set of user profiles. In a hypothetical example, Morgan described a newspaper Web site user who lives in Atlanta and who frequently checks airfares online. Such a customer would be a superior customer target for Delta Airlines, and the newspaper should be able to charge a premium for delivering that customer to Delta, he said.

"The more information and data we have, the better we can serve our advertisers," said Advance Internet President Peter Weinberger, who added that his newspaper-affiliated Web sites are using a variety of metrics to track audience data for advertisers. "We're generally optimistic that these new measurement tools will enhance our sales efforts and provide additional advertisers in the future."

A recent study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) suggests that simply measuring page views or unique visitors isn't sufficient. At an OPA luncheon in New York last month, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive CEO Chris Schroeder said Web sites must spent a lot of time explaining who their audiences are to potential advertisers. And they need to have compelling data to woo those clients, he said.

Geoff Ramsey, CEO of New York-based research firm eMarketer, predicted that the online advertising industry will eventually agree on a common metric for measuring the effectiveness of online campaigns -- perhaps a year or so from now. He said advertisers will be more interested in reach and frequency statistics than page views or unique visitors.

Tacoda's upgraded software includes reach and frequency reports which will allow publishers to compare online campaigns with other media. The software also supports multi-site reporting for publishers running more than one Web site.