Online advertising researchers InsightExpress and Marketing Evolution have teamed to make the measurement of online advertising effectiveness comparable to that of traditional media, especially TV, reports Media Post's Joe Mandese. Their new system combines InsightExpress's pre-testing of online ad creative and tracking of campaign effectiveness with Marketing Evolution's newly developed data for estimating online campaigns' reach and frequency - online's analog, so to speak, of TV's gross rating points (GRP), at local market levels.

The new system is named ADI Plus, a combination of Insight Express's "Ad Insights" and Marketing Evolution's "I GRPs" (I as in internet). The significance of local market GRPs for online, which isn't otherwise evaluated at the local market level (where products are actually sold) is that it would allow major marketers - such as Kraft and P&G - to factor it into their marketing mix models, Media Post explains.

"Having the same measurements as their offline counterparts will be huge for online," Fern Schapiro, EVP of client service and marketing at InsightExpress, is quoted as saying. Especially since marketing-mix models have also found favor in the financial services, automotive and other large marketing categories.