Tahir Khalil and Diego Semprun discuss the online media measurement services which Nielsen has recently introduced in the Middle East. Nielsen is a leading marketing and media information company worldwide.

Diego Semprún

Q1. Kindly introduce yourselves, your experiences and your company.

Diego Semprún: I am kind of early adopter of Internet measurement, as I’ve been working in this space since 2000. A couple of years later, the company I was managing in Spain was acquired by Nielsen NetRatings, and after a couple of years we became the standard for Internet measurement and web analytics in Spain. Since 2008 Nielsen trusted me with the development and management of the online business across all the new markets in EMEA, which covers almost everything from Sweden to South Africa but the 5 biggest countries in Western Europe.

Tahir Khalil: I have been in the Middle East for a little while now, having moved here with my family about 2 years ago. Currently I have two hats, looking after the launch of Nielsen On-line across the Middle East & North Africa as well as leading the Finance Practice for Nielsen. I am very excited to be a part of the launch  of Nielsen Online and its various world class products which are bringing clarity, transparency and reliability to the internet industry here in the region


Q2. Kindly give us a brief overview of Nielsen's existing and planned products in the field of measurement.

Tahir Khalil: Nielsen has been measuring various aspects of daily life for more than 26 years here in the Middle East ranging from the number of Pepsi bottles sold at a store to the rate of satisfaction of a banks customer base. Most recently we have launched our online media measurement services to help us understand the audience traffic that is going to participating websites and also understand the type of people visiting these sites. Putting these two together allows advertisers to better target their campaigns and in turn make for more cost effective advertisement. Continuing the on-line theme Nielsen is planning to bring more products from its global arsenal such as Ad relevance and Buzz metrics to the MENA market. Ad relevance will measure the level of ad spend online and buzz metrics measures the amount of consumer generated media messages that are out there about a particular brand, whether they are positive or negative and then allows marketers to target and influence brand ambassadors in a positive way.

Q3. What would you say are the main obstacles, if any, preventing more transparency and accountability in the Middle East online advertising scene?

Diego Semprún: It may sound a little bit strange, but I don’t see any obstacles. There are general trends towards providing transparency and to some extent all the companies that we’ve been talking to agree that it’s essential to get more budget from the advertisers.

I really believe that transparency and accountability are going to spread very quickly through the region, and that the whole industry (and the advertisers!) will benefit from this.
 
Now, it’s more about the timing of the change, and about having those companies moving forward. We don’t expect a mad rush towards our solution, but a steady continuous growth, as more and more companies move from agreeing on the concept to be prepared to the level of exposition that our measurement brings, it takes some time to get the teams prepared for the change.

Q4. Tell us about the levels of awareness you have seen among media owners regarding measurement in general, and sophisticated tools like TV and mobile.

Tahir Khalil: Measurement is not new, various entities have been measuring things their own way for some time now. What is new is the fact that a third party is measuring the media now. We are pleased to be able to offer to the market both internet and mobile measurement solutions and look forward to the opportunity to expand into other media as well.

Q5. How does Nielsen's approach towards online media measurement differ from currently available services? How has the feedback from major online publishers been so far?

Diego Semprún: Well, Nielsen’s Market Intelligence is currently available, it’s on production and we’re already servicing clients and agencies across the whole MENA region. It’s the first system of this kind to be ever developed, and has been kept updated since it was first released for New Zealand in 2002, and today is the most extended solution in the world for this kind of syndicated measurement, we provide services in places as apart as Spain, Sweden, South Africa or Taiwan, and even in the US for some specific verticals.

Our offer relies on a combination of state of the art measurement techniques, an obsession with providing the most accurate, reliable and high quality measurement, and the experience on how to help the Internet industries of each market into achieving the right measurement to provide transparency and trust from the advertisers.

To be honest, we don’t believe that technology or functionality alone will do the trick, we have them, but on top of these Nielsen is very strict on managing how the measurement is implemented or how the data is reported. Even if sometimes one online publisher is not happy with those rules, on the long run all of them agree having a strict provider is better for the business.
 
Another essential difference is that we always try to work in collaboration with our clients on the definition of the market rules, or in the adaptation of the International standards to the local needs, in some market we work with Joint Industry Committees, while in others where there is no market organization, we create client committees. This is important especially in the Internet space, where we’re all required to find new solutions (and new rules) every year, to answer to the incredible invention rate of this market.

Q6. Tell us about your policy regarding privacy laws in relation to media measurement.

Diego Semprún: One of the essential aspects of our business relies on the fact that the people allows us to measure what they do. If you think of it, taking care of the people privacy is essential for us, otherwise we would be damaging our own activity, as those same people would be reluctant to participate in the research if they knew that we won’t protect their privacy.

From this point of view Nielsen has a total commitment to follow the privacy laws in the countries where we have operations, to follow the international standards on research, and beyond that, to keep a permanent check on those issues.

On the internet this is especially important, we always use measurement systems that provide the best privacy protection, more than once we delayed the adoption of some techniques until we can guarantee that they are totally safe for the users, and that they match the laws.

Q7. Anything else either one of you gentlemen would like to add?

BOTH. We’re very positive about the future of the Internet advertising industry in the Middle East and North Africa, and we’re committed to this development. All the feedback that we’re getting, from the publishers, the advertisers and the agencies, point towards an increased interest now that we’ve started to provide third party measurements.