Diego Semprun: Nielsen Brought Fantastic Transparency on Bulgaria Online Market

Novinite Insider » INTERVIEW | Author: Milena Hristova |October 19, 2009, Monday // 10:35
Bulgaria: Diego Semprun: Nielsen Brought Fantastic Transparency on Bulgaria Online Market

Novinite.com exclusive interview with Diego Semprun, Senior Director Commercial Development at leading market-tracker Nielsen Online, a service of the Nielsen Company

What do you think about the Bulgarian online advertising market? How does it compare to other countries where your company has experience? Does it develop fast enough?

It’s hard to be a foreigner and to give strong comments on one market where you’re not on an everyday base. My perception is that the industry has been struck by the crisis, but keeps an impressive forward momentum, as the recent movements on the associative field show.

Also, the advertisers in Bulgaria still have a long way to go to understand that the audience has moved to the new media, and that they must to follow it if they want to be successful, but also if they want to have a healthy media where to put their advertising.

And there is no such thing as fast enough! We can always go faster!

Nielsen Online introduced in Bulgaria common measurement currency a year and a half ago in a key development for the local online market. How did that change it?

We believe that it brought a fantastic level of transparency, and from our feedback from the agencies it’s being widely used. But our perception is that we still have a long way ahead of us before we have the full set of tools that the advertising industry whishes for.

Did the contract that you signed with eight Bulgarian companies in February last year achieved its main goal to attract more advertisers to the online market?

We think so, although Bulgaria does not have a standardized Online Ad spending report for the country, which is one essential piece of the information for the industry.

Why did Nielsen Online pick marketing research agency Noema as their local partner?

It was the other way around.

How comprehensive is the Internet audience data that you provide to the Bulgarian market?

It’s very comprehensive for the websites that are under our measurement, and we will certainly expand this with new added unique functionalities, that will provide even more transparency and value to the agencies, the advertisers and the publishers.

How does your methodology work basically?

We’re using a very straight forward tag and survey methodology, the same that it’s running in dozens from New Zealand to Sweden, including markets like Spain or Greece.

A very simple explanation is that our clients put a piece of measurement code on the pages of their websites, when those pages are downloaded we get an impact and we count a cookie, the aggregation of that gives the quantitative data, then we produce metrics that provide realistic people measurement (the cookies per day, that we call “Unique Daily Browsers”).

On top of that, a sample of the cookies gets offered an anonymous survey that allows us to collect very transparent, stable and accurate demographics that are used on the media planning process.

To what an extent is Nielsen Online methodology forgery-proof?

Nielsen Online has included from the very beginning a lot of anti-forgery elements, and we keep a part of our research dedicated to this, as there is a lot of creativity in this field. We’ve specific anti-forgery tags, we use anti robot lists, and we use anti robot algorithms to figure out which traffic that we measure is not valid.

On top of this, in many markets we partner with an external Audit companies like BPAWW, OJD and others, who does a in depth analysis of the traffic that we measure to guarantee that our clients are claiming accurate traffic figures and that we’re doing a proper job.

Which are the services that you offered to your clients in Bulgaria?

At this moment we have rolled out the Internet Audience Measurement tool (Market Intelligence) and our web analytics suite (SiteCensus), but over the coming few weeks we will announce quite a lot of new tools.

Did you prove wrong those local online market players who accused you of lack of experience in countries like Bulgaria?

I think that we’ve learned a lot. So even if in the past they were right, this is not the case anymore.

Which of the data that your research gathered from the local online market do you personally find to be most interesting?

The general trend is towards growth of the audiences. In almost all the reports that we’ve done for one year or so we have seen a consistent year on year growth, across all the categories.

This is good news, and should attract a lot of attention from the advertisers.

There is another metric system working on the Bulgarian online market – Gemius. How does the availability of two metric systems impact the Bulgarian web space?

Some markets operate with more than one metrics system, it’s not the most usual trends but there are very successful examples, like Sweden. The important thing is that both metric companies agree standards so the market gets clarity.

UKOM has appointed Nielson as its official partner to deliver an industry-agreed online audience planning system in the UK. What will advertisers and their agencies benefit from that?

For the first time in the UK, advertisers and agencies will be able to confidently plan online campaigns using an industry-agreed and approved system (both in terms of methodology and the actual data provided) as they currently do with other media including TV, radio and print.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!

Interview » Be a reporter: Write and send your article
Tags: online market, Webit, Nielsen Online

Advertisement
Advertisement
Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily online newspaper "Sofia Morning News." Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) and Sofia Morning News publish the latest economic, political and cultural news that take place in Bulgaria. Foreign media analysis on Bulgaria and World News in Brief are also part of the web site and the online newspaper. News Bulgaria