Auto-refresh debate goes up a gear
Back in September I wrote a blog post about auto-refresh, a widespread practice used by publishers like Fairfax and ACP to distort their traffic figures. Since then the ABA has set up a ‘Digital Watchdog Comittee’ which I’m a part of. It also introduced a web audit process to validate publisher traffic data, with auto-Refresh being top of the list of practices they want to eradicate.
The issue hasn’t really gotten much coverage so I’m encouraged to see the ABA and the MFA going on the front foot this week. Yesterday Kerry Field of Mindshare and the MFA sent out an email to all its member agencies highlighting the issue and asking them to ‘encourage your staff to start demanding online publishers for audited numbers’. President of the MFA, Gary Hardwick took a strong stance in B&T stating “I encourage our industry to be extremely cautious about using numbers that have not agreed to undergo this process to make these commercial decisions. The truth is in the detail and for sites that are not audited, can we believe in the numbers?”.
Sound Alliance was one of the first publishers to complete the audit process and pass with flying colours. We whole-heartedly support the audit process and recognise the importance of placing publishers on an even playing field. One of the goals of my blog is to shine the light on the shady practices within the industry and it’s good to see the ABA doing some great work to lift everyone’s game.
What will be interesting is to see how everyone responds, and consequentially who passes and fails the audit and what impact removing auto-refresh has on the traffic figures.
To give the process a nudge, here’s the list of sites I’m aware of that use auto-refresh. As you can see we are not talking about amateur set ups here:
SMH homepage – auto refresh of 5mins
Sportal – auto refresh of 6mins
IT Wire – auto refresh of 15mins, all pages
Lifehacker – auto refresh of 15mins, all pages
Weatherzone – auto refresh of 10mins
Gizmodo – auto refresh of 15mins, all pages
Zoo weekly – auto refresh of 15mins
RSVP – auto refresh of 60mins
Essential Baby – auto refresh of 5mins
Business Spectator – auto refresh of 4mins
Real Estate.com.au – auto refresh of 5mins
Kotaku – auto refresh of 15mins, all pages
Defamer – auto refresh of 15mins, all pages
And here’s the email from Kerry:
Dear members
Did you know that in Australia some online publishers of specific content e.g. breaking news use a practice called auto refresh? With the practice of auto refresh, if you log onto a breaking news page and then leave it open on a tab or walk away from your desk the page and all the ads on the page refreshes every 2-3 mins. As you can imagine, this equates to many of our clients’ online ads being served but not necessarily being seen. Not only are our clients paying a premium for these ad impressions but they are also paying for the adserving.This is one of many ways that publishers can manipulate the numbers in our industry counting systems.
You may have read in the press recently that the ABA are developing their auditing business into the digital world. One of the areas of focus is ensuring that the numbers that appear in Nielsen’s Market Intelligence are fully audited based on a set of rules that have been agreed by an industry Watchdog Committee (on which the MFA have representation) for example, auto refresh numbers are not allowed to be counted. I have attached the list of rules for your perusal.
Having audited numbers is an extremely important development for the online industry. Please distribute this email and the attachment to anyone in your agency that is planning/buying online campaigns. Please encourage your staff to start demanding online publishers for audited numbers.
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[...] that the ABA, MFA and IAB are coming together to clamp down on auto-refresh. My previous rants on the issue seemed to strike a chord and got lots of comments. The proof is in the pudding, so let’s [...]