The future is bright for monitoring Social Media effectiveness

Internet consultants may like to make use of a new tool that has been introduced by The Nielsen Company that will enable them to utilise social networking site Facebook to measure and monitor the effectiveness of their internet-based ad campaigns.

Called Nielsen Brandlift, the program is the latest development that has arisen as a result of the collaboration between the firm and Facebook, a partnership that began in September 2009.

It implements opt-in polls on the site to ascertain the impact that marketing has on consumer behaviour and attitudes, such as ad recall, brand perception and purchase intent, factors that The Nielsen Company observed are important to advertisers.

And brands may benefit from utilising this information, as statistics from the organisation revealed that at the beginning of 2010, nearly 60 per cent of Britons with an active interest in the web visited Facebook, accounting for more than 17 per cent of all the time spent on the internet in the country.

Commenting on the new initiative, Guy Phillipson - chief executive at the Internet Advertising Bureau - said: "You need to follow an audience and find out what they do all day to decide where you are going to advertise, which is why people use breakfast time radio for example."

Source: Nielsen