NetRatings Announce Service To Improve Online Marketing Effectiveness For Consumer Packaged Goods.

NetRatings, provider of Nielsen//NetRatings, and ACNielsen U.S. announced the launch of Homescan Online, a new service designed to improve the effectiveness of online marketing for consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers and Web publishers.

“The CPG industry has evolved online to a point where market research tools are critical in understanding consumer buying behavior on the Web,” said Susan Nathan, SVP of Media Knowledge, Universal McCann. “We are looking forward to the Homescan Online service, which promises to deliver much needed research on how online consumers interact with CPG brands.”

Homescan Online will utilize 12,000 members of the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel who have opted in to the service, allowing their Internet behavior to be monitored with Nielsen//NetRatings technology as they record their offline buying behavior with ACNielsen’s proprietary in-home UPC code scanners.

Homescan Online will show CPG marketers the Web sites category or brand buyers are visiting, giving them a better understanding of consumers’ online behavior and helping them place more efficient media buys. Then it will help evaluate the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns by measuring actual offline purchasing behavior among consumer groups who were exposed to the advertisements. The service will also enable Web publishers to more effectively market themselves to the CPG community by helping consumer product marketers better target web site audiences by their specific brand consumption.

“This service will help make the Internet a much more viable advertising option for CPG marketers,” according to Robert Tomei, general manager/executive vice president, ACNielsen U.S. Homescan. “Two key questions CPG marketers have been asking about the Internet are: ‘How can I get a reliable read on where my buyers are going online?’ and, ‘how do I know if my online marketing is impacting retail sales?’ Homescan Online will provide the answers.”

“Homescan Online will deliver an invaluable market research tool to the CPG industry, at a time when there is an increasing call for accountability of all media investments,” said William Pulver, president and CEO, NetRatings, Inc. “This service will go a long way towards providing the CPG industry with an effective measure of ROI for their online investment and represents another dimension of NetRatings’ patented technology for measuring Internet usage and behavior.”

Homescan Online will integrate consumer retail purchasing of up to 12,000 CPG brands and online visits to more than 1,000 Web sites. Initial custom analysis from Homescan Online is expected to be available in January 2004.