Following Nielsen’s presence at ad:tech, Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw discussed the power of social media as it relates to the future of advertising and marketing.

Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics, The Nielsen Company, led a presentation at ad:tech surrounding the shifting media landscape and the search for a unified measurement form, or gross rating point (GRP) across media.

The way consumers shop for everyday products continues its transformation towards the Web. In 2008, online retail accounted for approximately 7% of total retail sales in the U.S, with 1.5% of consumer packaged goods (CPG) spending done on the Web.

Jon Gibs
The internet is in an increasingly funny place. We’ve developed a media that allows an extraordinary amount of targeting and advertising measurement structures previously unheard of in other media. We track impressions, ad engagement, clicks, view-throughs, conversions, post-buy demographics, time per ad, branding effect and offline ROI. We can measure, and even plan by, just about any construct an advertiser would like.
The funny part is we can’t seem to get our head around GRPs. This is something I’ve written about in some length in the past …