UK media buyers are looking for reliable, independent metrics that go beyond traffic levels or demographic details when making informed choices about the Web sites they will use to place online ads. Crucially, the second annual Media Buyers’ Table from Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR), provides UK media planners and buyers with these additional metrics and more.

“Using data collected on Web sites that participated in its online consumer research survey, the UK Internet User Monitor (UKIUM), Forrester has published a table of 10 key data points that every media buyer needs to know when assessing the Web site to use,” said Forrester Project Manager Howard Barber.

The research is carried out via a pop-up survey of site users and allows participating sites to gain a reliable profile of their users in terms of their demographic mix, online behavior, attitudes, and opinions. Of the 142 UK Web sites that took part in the most recent wave, 52 agreed to publish data collected about their users. The 10 key data points include standard demographics like age and social grade, but they also go far beyond that by showing Internet user behaviors like online buying propensity, offline media habits like TV viewing, and the frequency with which they visit given Web sites. The user profile of the UK Internet user is also shown so that media buyers have a benchmark from which to assess each individual Web site.

“Crucially, the Media Buyers’ Table provides UK media planners and buyers with vital information about UK Internet users’ attitudes toward online advertising — detailing, for instance, a user¿s propensity to click on ads and how they feel about Web advertising,” Barber added. “These data points are applied to each of the 52 sites participating in the Media Buyers’ Table: This includes some of the UK¿s highest traffic sites, such as Sky.com, FT.com, Beeb.com, thetimes.co.uk, tiscali.co.uk and aol.co.uk.”

For the three-week period between October 15 and November 5, 2001, more than 63,000 Internet users responded to an online poll of more than 100 questions, thus providing the most comprehensive indicator of the Internet’s development in the UK. Forrester weighted its online poll with traditional research using both telephone and mail-out surveys of more than 6,000 people to achieve a truly representative sample of the UK population as a whole. Online polling allows the recruitment of a user sample that is large enough to be statistically robust. Pop-up technology used with the agreement of all sites involved ensures that this sample is random, not self-selecting. Also, the number of high-traffic UK sites ensures that the survey captures a representative proportion of total UK Web traffic during the three weeks.