GRP's have been used for Television planning and measurement since the 1950's. The internet is a new medium, only some 20 years old. Online advertising came into existence in 1994, and since then a parallel world of data-driven media planning tools have evolved. Till date, the media industry has not been successful in bridging the gap between the two worlds. There have been some noteworthy attempts made by industry giants - Nielsen, ComScore and Google.

Broadly speaking, all online media players are looking at creating the GRP equivalent metric for digital. A metric that multiplies the reach of an ad by the frequency that the audience sees it. This will let marketers buy online ads the same way they buy ads for print, radio and TV. Let's try and understand some of these initiatives. 

1. Nielsen’s Online Campaign Rating (OCR) System

Nielsen's OCR, launched in August 2011 has seen some early adoption. Facebook was the first player to provide its data for this service, followed by Unilever's announcement in February 2012 to use the OCR across all its Internet Ad campaigns in the US.The OCR uses a tag to count when an online advertisement has been served. This tag is used by a publisher to match against its demographic data, which is then aggregated and mapped with Nielsen's customer panel data to form a GRP for the publisher.

2. Google's Brand Activate

On April 18th, Google announced 'Brand Activate'. There are two components to brand activate: Active View and Active GRP. An Active view is an impression that is at least 50% viewable on on screen for one second. Active GRP is the online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point (Television metric) which calculates reach multiplied by frequency.

Check this video from Google:

3. ComScore's Validated Campaign Essentials:

ComScore has a worldwide panel of 2 million people, and is closing in on Nielsen. In nature VCE is similar to Google's Brand Activate. According to ComScore, a lot of leading companies worldwide have tried and tested the VCE. To name a few brands - P&G, Chrysler, Ford, General Mills, Kraft, Ralph Lauren have been early adopters.

Summary:

Simplifying and standardizing planning currencies across media would be every organizations dream. If done right, it would further strengthen the case for a holistic media campaign. In India, where Television and Print take the majority pie of marketing spends, this may tilt the balance in favour of digital media. Does digital need a GRP? Only time will tell.

Mandar Marathe currently heads Reprise Media's Mumbai office. Mandar can be contacted at mandar13@gmail.com or via Twitter: @mandar13. He blogs at mandarmarathe.net.