Online set for single Barb-style panel

Barb for TV and Postar for outdoor. Jicims hopes the online panel will
go live later this year.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, said: "We can increasingly
measure click-throughs, but have to offer more than that to put online
on the planning table."

The four Jicims stakeholders, the Internet Advertising Bureau, the
Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the Association of Online
Publishers and Isba, have agreed on terms for the initial document to be
made public this month.

Peter Bowman, general manager of Jicims, said: "The four shareholders
all believe that, for all the detailed site-centric research out there,
there isn't user-centric research such as Barb, which would take panels
of users across sites, to find what types of people use them."

The panel will feature a single measurement currency that incorporates
the number of people visiting websites, as well as data on how long
visitors spend on websites.

Lynne Robinson, research director at the IPA, said: "We've been working
towards this for the past five years and it's long overdue. The sector
should finally have its own currency that will give it the same level of
accountability as other media."