The Publisher Research Council (PRC) has launched its Digital Audience Measurement System, or DAMS, to enable websites to ‘sell’ their audiences. It went live on 1 November.
Peter Langschmidt, managing director of Strategic Consulting Services (SCS) and consultant to the PRC, gives the background to its development.
“SCS were tasked with producing a new digital currency dashboard for the IAB. However, after many months of work, a week or so before we were due to launch the new IAB dashboard, the IAB backtracked,” he explains.
“We were left stranded with a finished product, and we believed that the industry needed a sales tool urgently. After approaching PRC members, Arena, Caxton and Daily Maverick, who are also members of the IAB, they unanimously agreed to supply SCS with their Google Analytics (GA) figures to get the new digital dashboard up in two weeks so that the industry could benefit.”
Langschmidt says the dashboard will be provided to the industry free of charge until 2023. “Many publishers are joining the PRC backed currency, while new publishers are supplying us with their GA stats on a daily basis. SCS expects that many publishers who participated in the Narratiive measurement will be participating in the PRC dashboard by the end of next week.”
The PRC has considerable media research and currency expertise. It is the oldest and one of the most trusted research bodies in Africa, having its roots as the NPU in 1882. It was also a founder member of SAARF in the early 1970s, funding the majority of the AMPS survey for many years.
The PRC focuses not only on the publishers but on the all-important agency/client buy side. Most media planning in South Africa takes place within Telmar, and we have already supplied them and our partner Harkle with the latest Online Universe estimates and weighting cells from FUSION22. FUSION22 is the most used media planning tool in the industry and brings together TV, print and radio currency data as well as over 1 800 brands. The PRC are a co-owner of FUSION and DAMS will take its place among the other media currency surveys in the study in 2023.
Harkle will then supply Telmar with respondent level site demographic data, as well as Narratiive site history demographics within a short timeframe. In 2023, DAMS will take its place alongside TAMS, RAMS and READ by being fused into the FUSION22 survey.
There is no need to join or pay any PRC membership fees at this stage; The Dashboard, the Telmar Feed and the FUSION22 fusion costs are all currently provided as a free service to all web publishers in South Africa.
