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What do you measure for websites?We verify the measurement of traffic activity to a site (a declared domain, set of domains and/or set of URLs), using metrics based on globally agreed industry definitions. The source data for the metric totals is the information contained in log files of servers measuring the content in question. Sites may use their original server log files, or use tagging technology (de... What is the definition of a Page Impression?A Page Impression is "A file or a combination of files sent to a valid User as a result of that User's request being received by the server." The key principle is that one request (e.g. a mouse click) for content by a User should result in one Page Impression being counted. In most cases, a single request for content (a page) by a User will actually result in the... Do you audit visitors?Yes, but we do not use the word "visitor" in our metrics. The global industry metric we use that represents the audience or reach of a website is (Unique) User ? which is sometimes known as (Unique) Visitor. What is the definition of a User?The industry defines a User as "A unique and valid identifier. Sites may use (i) IP+User-Agent, (ii) Cookie and/or (iii) Registration ID." This definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual people concerned. Certain traffic, for example hits made by robots, spiders, site developers or monitoring software, does not represent activity by a va... What is the definition of a Visit?A Visit is "A series of one or more Page Impressions, served to one User, which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive Page Impressions for that User." A Visit is effectively a burst of activity by a valid User. When taken in combination with Unique Users, the Visit provides quite a powerful way of measuring the lasting attractiveness o... How can I tell how long Users are on a site?The Industry has agreed practical Duration metrics (Visit Duration, Unique User Duration, Flash Duration, Stream Duration) that allow sites to communicate more effectively the time spent on a site by individual Users. For more information contact: info@abce.org.uk Can you audit our Ad traffic?Yes, using the rules laid out for Ad audits and the industry-agreed definitions for ad metrics such as Ad Impression and Ad Click. We can also conduct an audit of your ad serving system's compliance with the IAB Global Measurement Guidelines v6b. For more information contact: info@abce.org.uk How do you audit Flash, WAP, or Interactive TV content?Flash is audited under the Flash Impression metric, WAP under the WAP Impression metric and so forth. These are types of Page Impression; they can contribute to and can be broken out from the headline Page Impressions total. Duration metrics can also be used to emphasise the special character of non-HTML content. For more information contact: info@abce.org.uk. How can I measure streaming content like video and audio?The industry has defined the Stream metric as "An indicator of a media file stream sent to a valid User as a result of that User's request being received by the server." This metric is designed to measure only the number of times that a User has requested the streaming process. If you wish, you can break out the types of Stream into Live and On-Demand, and/or into Audio an... What do I do about refreshed or automated pages?Currently, the industry definition for Page Impressions (see above) deems Automated Pages - in other words, those served as a result of an automated process under site control such as a META REFRESH HTML tag in the page - to be valid. Audit certificates issued must carry a breakdown from the headline Page Impressions total, showing the total of Automated traffic where it r... How would you audit chat traffic?There are metrics for auditing non-HTML based chat such as IRC to do with connection time, number of nicknames online, and lurkers v active participants. All such metrics can be derived from analysis of the chat logs. If your chat pages uses HTML then HTML Chat Page Impressions, Users and Visits can be certified. Can we audit the e-mails we send to people?Yes. There are now industry-agreed metrics for the reporting of emails sent, emails bounced, opt-in and mailing times. A media owner would need to discuss and agree in detail the approach to be taken, the metrics and definitions to be certified and the data that will be used to generate the statistics and support and verify the claims. For more information contact: info@ab... Can you audit games?Yes in principle - if the game is HTML based then it is usually appropriate to use the agreed web metric definitions. Sites with non-HTML based games may not be able to use the current agreed metrics. In such cases ABC ELECTRONIC may be able to work with the site so long as: The client is able to establish and count statistics using auditable identifiers for the content wi... What do you do about frames and pop-ups?Any non-requested frames within a frame-set, or pop-ups served concurrently with another page, are not valid Page Impressions under the industry-agreed rules and therefore are excluded from certified activity. What is internal traffic?All traffic generated by activities such as development, maintenance, or monitoring (whether in-house or by contractors) must be excluded. However, you can include traffic generated by non-technical and non-development staff if the site can demonstrate to the auditor that it can differentiate such activity from the disallowed internal traffic. Why do you exclude robotic traffic?Because we seek to certify only web site traffic that has been served in response to requests made by humans. How do you exclude robotic traffic?All claimed web-site statistics must exclude robotic activity to within an agreed threshold. ABC ELECTRONIC supplies an exclusion list to help in this process. This list relies on matching case-insensitive strings in the user agent field in the data collection log. As an additional safeguard, you may wish also only to allow traffic through if it matches an include list of ... What if a lot of my traffic comes from companies with a single IP address?This is a problem shared by all sites. Hence, any impact is deemed to be equally shared across all sites. This is especially true for similarly targeted sites therefore sharing similar demographics. Remember that the purpose of the audit is to certify traffic statistics creating comparable data for web sites. The industry-agreed Unique User identifiers (IP+User-Agent, Cook... What about the impact of caching by proxy servers such as ISPs?This is a problem shared by all sites. Hence, any impact is deemed to be equally shared across all sites. This is especially true for similarly targeted sites which therefore share similar demographics. Remember that the purpose of the audit is to certify traffic statistics creating comparable data for websites. The impact of caching can be reduced in various ways ? using ... What do you do about traffic coming from ISPs with dynamically allocated IP addresses?This is a problem shared by all sites and hence any impact is deemed to be equally shared across all sites. This is especially true for similarly targeted sites therefore sharing similar demographics. Remember that the purpose of the audit is to certify traffic statistics creating comparable data for web sites. Are there global standards?Yes - ABC ELECTRONIC is a member of the IFABC (International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulations, www.ifabc.org). All members are industry-owned media auditing organisations. The Federation has a Web Standards Committee which works to ensure that common standards are used by these organisations. What is JICWEBS?The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards, www.jicwebs.org. This is the UK Industry body that adopts the definitions and sets the minimum standards required for audits within the UK and Ireland Can you audit retrospectively?No, this is not possible. However, we do offer Faithful Extraction reports for clients wishing to declare traffic statistics based on non-authenticated raw log files. Do we have to publish the results of our audit?No. ABC ELECTRONIC works confidentially with all clients. Therefore the information is only placed in the public domain (including on the ABC ELECTRONIC web site) with client permission. How long does an audit take?If we receive completed claims and compliant supporting data in the required format, to the agreed timetable, then certification can be achieved in 10 days from delivery of the data. How much does an audit cost?We charge a minimum audit fee of £1,388.00 + VAT. Contact info@abce.org.uk or call Stuart Maxwell on 01442 200831 for a quote. Who else is being audited?See our current client list. However, as ABC ELECTRONIC works confidentially with all clients, only those clients that have chosen to have publicity are listed. What happens during the web traffic audit?The client will ensure that a data collection log representing their site's inventory is processed to generate statistics for daily and monthly totals of each metric that they wish to have certified. The client will then submit a claim to ABC ELECTRONIC for the metric totals it has generated. We will review the claim and request sample data during the audit period. We will... Do we have to use a particular process to filter our data and create our claim?No - the client can use any software program or script, written in any language, to create the filtered file as described in question 5.9 above. Many sites have found Perl a very flexible and efficient tool for filtering their log files for auditing purposes. ABC ELECTRONIC has a Perl script that can easily be configured to supply claim figures and filtered files. Prices s... Do you insert pixels in our pages?This is not a requirement of the audit. However, browser-based page tagging can be used if ABC ELECTRONIC is satisfied that the tagging process meets audit requirements. A number of compliant tagging solutions can be found on our "Associate Subscribers " page. There is no simple answer to this. The numbers you get depend entirely on whether your configuration com... Do you put software on our servers?This is not normally a requirement of the audit. You decide which tools to use to produce your claim. What analytics tool should we use?ABC ELECTRONIC seeks to work with all clients however they choose to make their claim. ABC ELECTRONIC does not recommend any one software package over another. However, our Associate Subscribers scheme holds details of those companies that have chosen to work with us, and who are interested in providing counting mechanisms that comply with the industry agreed rules. Those ... What is a log file?The log file (usually a server access log, or a log generated by a page tag) provides the specific data regarding each file or transaction processed by a server. The log files used to substantiate your claims for the audit period must be archived for future reference. In order to audit a web site, ABC ELECTRONIC requires that an audit trail can be established for all the v... What information do you need in the log files?Date and time stamp of the request (NB: where more than one server is used the date and time stamps need to be synchronised and preferably set to GMT) If your data comes from web server logs, HTTP method (e.g. GET) and server status code (e.g. 200, 302, 404) of the request, and name or IP address of the server are also required. Note that Apache Common Log Format does NOT ... What is a compliant log ("filtered file")?In order to certify traffic figures, ABC ELECTRONIC audits the claimed statistics. These statistics are established by the site owner (or by a third party) by filtering in accordance with the industry agreed rules (see Section 3, Traffic Validity) to create compliant logs. The site must make available the raw data from which these filtered statistics have been derived, and... What if we have multiple Web servers?The server name should be recorded in the server access (raw) log files and the separate servers should be time-aligned to each other. We have audited many multi-server sites. What is a Date+UserID file?Where a total Unique User figure for the audit period is to be certified, we require a Date+UserID file. This records the dates during the audit period on which any particular User (however the User was defined) was active on the domain (or vice versa, i.e. all Users present on each day of the certification period). What is a Date+UserID+Domain file?See 6.11. Where Users are being certified across more than one domain, we require all domain names in this file as well. This enables us to see which subdomains were accessed by specific Users. |
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