Q: We are a marketing communications firm that does web site and CD-ROM development, web advertising and other forms of online merchandising, in addition to traditional marketing/advertising. We have a client who is interested in finding out traffic information and statistics for the sites of its competitors. Can you suggest a source? - Beth F.

A: I am someone who loves competitor intelligence, especially the kind that's relatively easy to get. Competitor ad spending and competitor site data has never been easy to obtain. You could rely on InterWatch data (Formerly Jupiter AdSpend) for competitive ad spending and publisher revenue. I've found the data to be neither accurate nor timely, but it provides an apples-to-apples comparison of sites, and is the only service of its kind out there. For a few thousand dollars, it's at least interesting to glance through.

Keep in mind that NetRatings and Media Metrix provide competitive site traffic and usage reports, providing demographic analysis by site. I was recently given a hands-on demonstration of the NetRatings system by Vice President of Sales Bob Hooven. And I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.

What has been positioned in the market place as a "ratings" service, is truly much more. NetRatings actually offers the ability to perform competitor intelligence - in fact, advertising competitor intelligence. With a few clicks of the mouse and some diligence, you can determine what advertisements your competition used, where they were linked to (and go there), where the ads were placed, how each ad performed, how many impressions they received, the demographic profile of people who viewed the ad and so on.

The power of the NetRatings system is remarkable, but it does have its drawbacks. NetRatings scans thousands of banners each week. However, many banners receive too few impressions to be accurately accounted for. Consequently, the most active banners are used.

In addition, you must put some time into sifting through all the ads, since the ads are not marked by advertiser, nor are they categorized by segment. NetRatings does aggregate like-banners based on their individual pixel code, regardless of their names. And NetRatings is just beginning to integrate rich media banner tracking into its system. As you might guess, rich media presents some technical difficulties.

The bottom line: With some number-crunching fools or data fiends, you can pull NetRatings data, and overlay it with InterWatch AdSpend data (if it is timely enough for you) to determine spending levels by site. You may be able to approximate competitive creative burn-out levels (hence, effectiveness) by analyzing historical reach, frequency and performance data. Overlay any other information you'd like, and you can manually develop some pretty cool competitive analysis models.

Media Planning Tools

Q: What is your opinion of the online planning software packages such as Media Metrix, @plan, MarketMatch, and so on. How would you compare them? How useful do you feel they are? -- Donna M.

A: I want to start by distinguishing a media planning tool from a data and ratings service. I see @Plan, AdKnowledge's MarketMatch, and components of IPRO Dispatch and Perceptual System's ActiveAd as media planning tools. I see Media Metrix and NetRatings as rating services (or perceptions).

Of course, you can purchase both. You'll find that tools like MarketMatch make the ratings data more useful. MarketMatch applies the data in a planning system which is exactly why MarketMatch supports nearly all of the aforementioned rating services.

Sure, you can use a rating service as a media planning tool. But it's more than likely that was not the design intent. However, there is a trend for rating services to evolve into media planning tools. MediaMetrix (former Relevant Knowledge) has released a media planning version of its service.

I personally favor the @Plan system as an all-encompassing media research tool. @Plan has partnered with Gallup to create unique and original data everything from age, gender and income to what color your toothbrush is. Unfortunately, @Plan hasn't given me the full-blown demo, so I can only rave about what limited information I've seen, heard and read.

Second in my pick for media planning tools is MarketMatch from AdKnowledge. MarketMatch was the first and is the most established of all tools. It can integrate several data sources like Simmons, NetRatings, MediaMetrix and MRI. In addition, MarketMatch has become a component of a bigger planning and executions suite from AdKnowledge.