As of January 2021, Ipsos iris is the new UKOM endorsed solution for online audience measurement.
Ipsos iris has been designed for the needs of the industry; via a rigorous, simple and transparent single-source solution it will provide more frequent and granular data of online audience behaviour.
A key part of the solution is tagging. This article explains the importance of tagging as part of the Ipsos iris project
Why Tag?
Tags help ensure that your assets, including websites and apps, and the content therein (written or video) are measured across all devices and represented completely to the marketplace.
Some key benefits of the tag include:
- Full measurement of your audience reach, including Active Time Spent
- Guaranteed reporting data for smaller web properties that may be under-represented by the user-centric panel
- Extending the reach of the user-centric panel from 25,000 to potentially millions of devices
What are tags?
Tags are a fast loading snippet of code embedded on a website (see below for apps) to perform a specific task. The tag loads asynchronously, meaning it loads alongside other tags a site may use. Tag load times are typically 5 milliseconds. [This is as fast as a honey bee flaps its wings once: Wikipedia]
For audience measurement tags help collect information about visitors and how they behave on websites across desktops, smartphones and tablets. Through this method Ipsos iris will collect engagement on domains, sub-domains and pages alongside useful device-level information.
The data collected via tags will reinforce the multi-vector approach that Ipsos uses to measure audiences in an increasingly privacy centric world. These include measuring via the following:
- A GDPR compliant opt-in panel to understand passive user-centric behaviour across the web and apps
- Tags to collect site-centric engagement on publisher domains and apps
- Device fingerprinting to profile behaviour of groups of devices
With data collected from site-centric tags, tagged apps and user-centric panel, Ipsos can create unique user profiles that allow understanding and de-duplication of audiences across devices, web properties and apps.
Can you tell me more about the irisID?
The Ipsos irisID is an identifier that ascribes individual behaviour within the Ipsos iris panel and tagged properties to a larger dataset. No single user can be profiled in the data output. This practice has its foundations in Differential Privacy. You can read more about this HERE.
The irisID will provide insight into the behaviour of aggregated devices in the UK. irisID is futureproof because cookies, which store information about users visiting sites online, are an input, but not the foundation of the Ipsos iris methodology.
This deliberate approach to futureproof the irisID anticipates major browser vendors choosing to phase out support for cookies.
What about mobile apps?
Ipsos plans to support measurement of mobile apps to collect similar engagement data within apps as we do for publishers websites.
In-app measurement will be via Software Development Kits (SDK) available for both iOS and Android. Integration will be straightforward for mobile app developers.
So, I’d like to tag, what next?
Ipsos will work with publishers to agree how they wish their brands to be structured within Ipsos iris. Once this structure has been agreed tags and technical documentation will be provided to publishers through an administrative interface.
Tags are straightforward to implement within a publisher’s existing setup, whether you implement tags directly onto a page or through a tag manager such as the Google Tag Manager (GTM).
Developers, therefore, need some knowledge of how to set up tags within their site environment.
Tags are available NOW. To ensure being reported in Ipsos iris from January 2021, please email tag-support@ipsosiris.com and they will provide the necessary information to get you started.
