Saturday, November 7, 2009

Data consistency sidebar

I mentioned here that I would compare my post on online spending trends to Rob Leathern's and see why we came to different conclusions. The answer, unsurprisingly to anyone who's done any work with this type of industry data, is that we use different numbers.

I used TNS for ad spend data. Rob used both TNS and IAB numbers. TNS and the IAB have wildly different estimates for online ad spending. For example, US online spend in billions:

    2007
    2008
TNS$11.3$11.8
IAB$21.2$23.5

TNS has consistently had smaller numbers for online spend than the IAB. I'm not going to pass judgement on whose numbers are better: I do not know. I merely noted the difference and decided that if I was going to compare online to other media, I would use spend numbers from a single source. This, I think, gives a better comparison, if not necessarily a better absolute number.
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3 comments:

  1. nikiscevakNovember 8, 2009 at 5:23 PM

    On the methodology: TNS measures display ads only. IAB number is display + search + email + lead gen + classifieds (although they do an average job of measuring classifieds).

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 25, 2009 at 11:27 AM

    I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
    And you et an account on Twitter?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jerry NeumannDecember 26, 2009 at 1:28 PM

    Well, sure, it's a blog: happy to be quoted.

    I have a twitter account, @ganeumann

    ReplyDelete

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