Traffic measurement by ABCe

ABC Electronic (ABCe) is an organisation that provides an industry standard measurement in the UK for websites that wish to sell advertising and need independently verified statistics on their visitor numbers and usage data. In such a confusing area where websites tend to quote a wide array of statistics gathered in different ways – including the irrelevant figure of ‘hits’ – the ABCe site can provide some valuable data on the state of the Internet market.

ABCe was formed at the end of the 1990s as an offshoot of the established Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry owned, non-profit organisation set up by print publishers to audit and verify the circulation figures of newspapers and magazines to provide advertisers with trustworthy and reliable data.

Measuring standardised visitor numbers in the Internet market was a bigger challenge, but the ABCe system was established to create industry accepted metrics that could be used by participating companies so that website and advertising traffic data could be published, along with other forms of electronic media such as SMS and iTV. The companies who register with ABCe to verify their data tend to be some of the largest web publishers in the UK. Certificates are issued following the audit of each site, which takes place on a regular basis from monthly to quarterly or even annually in some cases, and this information is then used by the publishers to sell advertising on their site.

By going on to the ABCe website, you can search or browse the database of participating publishers by name or business sector. Within each option, you can click on the publisher / website name to view usage data over time or download the certificates that include more detailed information, although this can vary in depth.

This data would certainly be of interest to anyone intending to advertise on any of these sites and should be openly provided by the publisher anyway. The value to other observers is to see what volumes of traffic are actually being attracted to some of these major sites, either in a specific business field or in the market generally.

For example, in the search market, a number of sites have been certified although most have not done so for the last few years as the market becomes more sensitive. The most recent figures for Yahoo UK (Jan 03) show 930m page impressions in the month, Ask Jeeves UK (Nov 03) shows 128m page impressions and 6.4m unique users, whereas AltaVista UK was last audited in March 2001 and records 42m page impressions in the month.

In the business market, the Applegate directory was audited in May this year and records 4.7m page impressions and 853,000 unique users. Finally, as an example of a major player in the UK web market, Sky’s website was audited in August and shows 514m page impressions in the month and 10.8m unique users visiting the site.

If you’d like to know more about the ABCe statistics and the process employed, please contact us for more information.

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