Marketing executives are increasingly shifting their ad budgets online, but they might be willing to spend more if the industry would develop better internet audience measurements, Adweek reports, detailing the findings of a survey released last week by McKinsey & Co. In a poll of 410 marketing executives, 52 percent of marketing execs who currently advertise online cited “insufficient metrics to measure impact” as the main impediment they confront when considering the allocation of internet ad dollars. Other drawbacks cited by the marketing heads in McKinsey survey said:

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—A lack of in-house digital capabilities (41 percent)

—The inability to convince management (33 percent)

—Digital’s limited reach (24 percent)

—Ad agency’s lack of digital capabilities (18 percent).

While the issue of capabilities at the agency and in-house combined add up to 59 percent, the difficulty in gaining management’s confidence to support an online ad campaign could be driven by the “insufficient metrics,” giving those combined categories a response of 85 percent. As for those marketers surveyed by McKinsey who don’t currently do any notable online advertising, the results were fairly similar, the Adweek piece points out.

The survey also showed that most of those surveyed consider online ads to be a more efficient method versus traditional models, it’s likely that it’s the relatively unproven, nascent quality of internet that makes it tough to make the case for a more forceful digital strategy.

—IAB’s Progress On Metrics Guidelines: For much of the past year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has been working on establishing uniform definitions and guidelines for audience measurement. Last spring, it got the two main internet audience measurement companies, comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings to agree to submit their methods for auditing and accreditation. Seeking to build on those goals, the IAB is combining its efforts with the independent Media Rating Council and drawing up guidelines that will define unique visitors, page views and time spent, and they include a review of the impact of cookie deletion, international traffic, spiders and bots and other factors on audience measurement. To promote the adoption of the guidelines among the industry, the IAB has formed a new Research Advisory Board, which includes executives from MTV Networks, Time Inc, Condé Nast, Forbes.com, ESPN.com, MSN, Univision and Weather.com.  Release