Best ever national internet ad spend measurement launched in Denmark

Today my organisation, FDIM – IAB Denmark, published figures for Danish internet adspend in Q1, 2006. What’s remarable is not so much the figures in itself, although they – once again – mark a best ever quarter: internet adspend, net of discounts, as reported by the internet media themselves, reached € 14,2 mio euro in the display-banners-and-partnerships category and € 29,6 mio in the marketplace category covering classifieds, acutions, pricecomparisions and directories. Of these € 29,6 mio joblistings alone accounted for € 10,3 mio. Note that paid search is not included in any of the figures.

No whats really interesting is the scope of the ad spend measurement. It’s designed to cover all internet adspend activity, be that classical banners, permission marketing, search, classifieds or any other money paid by advertisers in order to have information on themselves and their products displayed on thirdparty websites. This ambition is also the reason why auctions sites are included in the adspend meassurement as well: The fee payed by the seller of an item on an internet-auctions is considered advertising his product for sale. (The fee payed by the buyer of the item, is – for the same reasons – not included.

When the numbers mentioned above is exclusive of payed search and permission marketing, its due to poor data-quality in these two categories: The ad spend meassurement is not blindly guessing – it’s based on internet media (primarily the members of FDIM) reporting ther actual ad-sales revenues to the measurement – that is: to Deloitte who does the job of collecting the data and setting everything right for FDIM. However, in “paid search”, which is a huge area, one player, namely Google, doesn’t want to contribute, and therefore removes the basis of providing “fact”-figures in the “paid search” category. The same goes for the “permission marketing”-category. However permission marketing is not expected to contribute significant to the total adspend.

Want to know more? At FDIM.dk (here’s the precise link) you’ll find additional information what the ad spend actually covers – in Danish. I’ve done a rough, unoffical and only partly translation of one of the central documents – the “How to report: Guide to FDIMs Ad Spend Measurement”. For you to download here.