The San Francisco advertising-research firm on Monday unveiled Voyager Profile, a new service that lets advertisers verify when a targeted ad hits home. A slew of marquee partners have already signed on to deploy the service, including online ad network DoubleClick and ad-management technology firms AdForce and AdKnowledge . Once selected, panelists fill out a 300-field survey that includes demographics and buying habits. Millward Brown then tags each panelist's browser through a small string of identifying data called a cookie. When a tagged panelist arrives at any of the Web sites that has partnered with Millward Brown, the site's ad-server will recognize the browser and take note of which ads it was served.
All personal identification is stripped.
Web sites can instantly double check the accuracy of the size of the projected population by comparing it to the raw numbers of visitors in the Web sites' server logs. Millward Brown's partners are betting that advertisers will be willing to pay them a premium for ad campaigns certified by the Millward Brown sniffer. Marketers have specific reach goals, and they want assurance that the message is being communicated to the right target. Analysts echoed the sentiment. Still, Neufeld stresses that it will take many months or even years before traditional advertisers become wholly convinced that Millward Brown can deliver what it promises.