The UKOM-endorsed Ipsos iris online audience measurement study uses data from a 10,000 respondent multi-device metered panel combined with census data from website and app tags. This is commonly known as a ‘hybrid’ methodology.

Panellists are recruited online and offline, incentivised by a points-based reward system. They provide demographic information (their own and their household’s) before downloading app/browser extension/VPN configurations that track visits on their device(s) to websites and apps. The panel is representative of the UK in terms of age, gender, region and socio-demography.

The onus lies with the media owner to implement the appropriate tags across all their digital properties. Different tags are required for websites and apps.

This hybrid approach ensures that the limitations of any single methodology are minimised. For example, most media measurement panels struggle to capture all out-of-home usage and, in the case of the internet, can also tend to under-report the use of smaller or niche sites (the ‘long tail’) – but they do provide demographic details about users. Tagging, on the other hand, ensures that all-location use is represented but it cannot yet deliver reliable audience demographic data.

Crucially, this combination of metered panels and tagging also allows the de-duplication of visits by the same person from different browsers, devices and locations. Web analytics systems generally do not de-duplicate many of these single-user, multiple visits. This is a key step in the production of audience-level data.

A more detailed summary of the UKOM-endorsed Ipsos iris product methodology can be found here.