NEW YORK/TORONTO—The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a document last week titled “Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions,” which defines the metrics specific to three categories of social media: social media sites, blogs, and widgets and social media applications. The report also covers other social media tools: posted newsfeed items, user comments, poll votes, site relevance, author credibility, content freshness and relevance, and conversation size.

In evaluating the most important measurement terms, the IAB hopes to help marketers, agencies and publishers quantify the value added by consumers as they distribute the content throughout their personal networks.

Paula Gignac, president of IAB Canada, sees the new definitions as a great way of simplifying things for people in the advertising industry. “They’re basically lenses that allow you to look at your campaign’s performance,” she explains. “It would give advertisers more choices for the ways that they are going to evaluate their campaigns.”

The definitions cover a variety of online user interactions and dialogues, as well as methods to put solid numbers together for online activities to help marketers, agencies and publishers quantify the value added by consumers as they distribute the content throughout their personal networks, one of the defining characteristics of social media. Gignac thinks the new measurements for the use of widgets and social application on mobile devices are the most interesting additions. “These are pretty nascent areas and everybody is looking to see what the proper metrics should be for that.” 

IAB Canada will be reviewing the document on June 4th during its Emerging Platforms Council meeting, but Gignac says there is a high likelihood that it will be approved without any revisions. The bureau president believes the new definitions are beneficial not just for the U.S. but for the Canadian market as well. “Anything that helps organize the industry or anything that helps advertisers and agencies figure out if their campaigns are moving forward is a really positive thing,” she says. “The more metrics you have in the industry, the better it is.”

To view the complete document, please go to: www.iab.net/socialmetrics