Following a three-month review process, Stuart Pike, chairman of the IAB-led Cross Industry Online Advertising Measurement Committee, today announced panel measurement had been identified as the "most appropriate solution for industry standard online audience measurement in Australia".

Nielsen, which earlier this year produced a list of what it described as the top 10 technology sites in Australia but failed to include up to 5 sites that were outranking many of those chosen by Nielsen, has been an advocate of a measurement that best suits its business practises.

According to AdNews, Allan Dibb, managing director of Nielsen Online, has labeled the decision "a step backwards" for online measurement.  "It's like the IAB are taking the easy way out," Dibb said.

Nielsen Online has long championed site-centric measurement, which involves placing tags on the browsers of visitors. More recently, Nielsen Online has been working on a hybrid measurement technique that combines site-centric measurement with panel based measurement.

"International observers are saying that Australia is leading in this space. Bringing together site-centric and panel based measurements was ground-breaking and we believe it's the right metric for our clients," said Dibb. "I believe a lot of the industry currently agree with us on this."

But the IAB has dismissed the idea of a hybrid approach in the short term. "We believe that the best approach for online audience measurement will be panel based methodologies," said Pike.

"There is undoubtedly a place for hybrid solution at some point, but for the immediate future our focus will be upon reviewing panel methodologies with a view to refining and tightening the current methodologies before they can be accredited."

Dibb said it was possible Nielsen Online might shun the IAB accreditation system altogether and advance its hybrid approach as an alternative to the IAB's attempt at an industry standard - although he conceded it was early days and wanted to confer with clients first.

According to Dibb, the IAB's proposed panel-based approach will damage smaller players, including ad networks, which are becoming an increasingly element of the online industry. "Look at our magazine clients for example. We've got 75 magazines sites, but only 18 of them appear in our NetView panel. Regardless of how big the IAB wants to make panels, they are never going to capture that long tail."

Dibb said the IAB's board and membership was "unrepresentative" of the online industry as a whole and, therefore, its attempts to produce a consensus on an industry standard, could be problematic.

"The IAB doesn't represent all players. It represents big publishers, not ad networks and not the big classifieds players down in Melbourne. All those players are not part of the IAB."

Dibb also criticised the IAB's focus on monthly data, which he said was a step backwards from the daily data Nielsen Online was increasingly focused on. "The point is to help agency buyers, but while the average campaign is monthly, in the US it's going weekly. If that happens in Australia, monthly data won't be anything for agency planners to go by," said Dibb.

An example of how accurate Nielsen Onlines methodology is was reflected in the technology top 10 when CNet who attract millions every month was missed out. It then turned out that Nielsen had only included paying clients.