Nielsen Online's web gauge could unleash ad spending

Marketers have lacked reliable data on internet activity

Regional marketers will soon have another tool to measure the effectiveness of their online advertising campaigns when Nielsen Online offers a website to track web usage in the Middle East. Online advertising in the region accounts for an estimated 4 per cent of global advertising spending, but industry experts say it is increasing rapidly and may triple by 2014.

Limited access to affordable high-speed internet for residents of the region has been cited as a major factor limiting online advertising - if the market is small, the quantity of advertising will be small. But marketers also do not have the detailed analysis of online activity that they need to shape their campaigns. While services such as Google, Effective Measure and Quantcast provide analytical data, Nielsen Online is preparing a suite of internet marketing offerings in the Middle East that should help push more of the region's advertising spending to the web, said Diego Semprun de Castellane, the managing director of emerging markets for Nielsen Online.

One of those tools is Nielsen Online's "Market Intelligence" service, a browser-based audience measurement tool that provides robust analysis of a website's users, performance and other critical data. The tool has been available in the US and Europe for a number of years and is considered to be one of the leading online analytical services. "It's a lot like people meters for television but for online," Mr de Castellane said. "It's extremely complex, sophisticated and expensive, so we need to build the business capacity to support that ? We are able to provide a broader understanding of the market and provide metrics of things that aren't that easy to measure."

Internet usage has steadily increased in the MENA region, with 35.7 million unique browsers being tracked in March, up from 28.4 million in February, figures from Nielsen Online show. The number of unique browsers should not be taken as an accurate measure of the region's total online population, as one person can access the web through multiple browsers across a range of computers and mobile devices.

"The increasing usage of technology, bandwidth, content and social media has already changed a lot of things," Mr de Castellane said. "It's giving users in the region a broader way to communicate internationally." Mr de Castellane says additional services from Nielsen Online and its competitors are crucial to improving the size of the regional online advertising market."It is part of a system of things that need to happen," Mr de Castellane said.

It is estimated that US$96 million (Dh352.8m) was spent on online advertising in the region last year, compared with $60m in 2008. "While we think these tools are a way to improve the transparency of the market," he said, "there is also the need to have an industry association that brings all the players in the regional online space to discuss ways on improving the sector." [e-mail]