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Mediaweek: SQAD's WebCosts Service To Forecast Online Ad Buys

For the first time, agencies and advertisers will be able to compare the cost of an Internet buy to the market at large.

SQAD, the company that tracks and forecasts cost-per-points for television and radio spots, will unveil this week preliminary data from its new WebCosts product at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' annual media conference. The first cost-forecasting service for online display advertising, WebCosts is set to launch in third quarter.

While the Internet is the fastest-growing ad segment, drawing billions of dollars in ads each year, agencies placing dollars have had no benchmark to gauge ad rates for a particular buy.

"This should bring some transparency and a reality check to the medium," said Neil Klar, president and CEO for SQAD. "The Internet is a very analytically intense medium, but most of the analytics are on the back end. We're providing an analytical database for the front end."

Like SQAD's TV and radio product, WebCosts will report average CPMs for Web sites, creative formats, ad sizes and categories, and time periods. The service has been in development for more than a year and beta-tested by 14 agencies, representing annual Web ad spending of about $750 million.

Find the full article at http://www.mediaweek.com.