AOL, Nielsen to test Online Ratings Approach

One of the factors that has slowed the development of online advertising revenues has been the lack of a standard audience exposure metric - particularly one that is comparable to the metrics employed by more traditional media outlets.  While there are a number of current efforts working towards devising a metric acceptable to both advertisers and the online industry, to date there's no widely accepted metric like Nielsen's TV ratings, Arbitron's radio ratings, or the ABC metrics used by newspaper and magazine publishers.  (All of which are also having problems trying to measure cross-platform exposures).
  The recent announcement that AOL would start using the new Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) will certainly push the effort along.  Nielsen's OCR moves beyond base online metrics, using a large sample to link demographic information with raw counts of screen views or click-throughs.

“With online video increasingly playing a role in traditional TV upfront buying and selling, consistent cross-platform metrics are becoming more and more critical to proving the true value of advertising on a site, in terms that are familiar to brand marketers,” stated Steve Hasker, a top Nielsen executive.

AOL plans to use the Nielsen numbers to establish an upfront market for online advertising, providing the same kind of audience guarantees used by TV networks for several of its original content offerings.  The advertising industry remains somewhat skeptical at this point, arguing that even while there may be some premium online inventory that would justify upfront purchasing, its supply still exceeds current levels of demand - so that AOL is unlikely to receive any kind of premium for its offerings.

Source -  AOL Uses Nielsen Ratings, Peels Ad Dollars From TV,  Online Media Daily