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January 30, 2012 12:00 AM

The meeting was scheduled for a long time, but may take place under high voltage. Médiamétrie brings today's Internet Committee to try to finally adopt clear rules on the extent of hearing of news sites. A topic that is controversial, at the time where competition is exacerbated among the different actors for attracting advertising investment online advertisers.

Eighteen representatives of the mass media (TF1, Radio France, "Le Figaro", "Les Echos"...), operators Internet (Google, MSN, France Telecom...) and advertising (Carat, Havas, Publicis...) agencies must notably vote on two points that get angry: the posting of lottery games in the Internet media sites hearing and the aggregation of the hearing of the third party sites.

In recent weeks, the war of words is exacerbated between heavy goods vehicles for the largest audience on the Web when conflicting victory releases. Side newspapers, weapons pass objects including LeFigaro.fr and LeMonde.fr, claiming each first place on different criteria. Blogs, Skyblog (Skyrock subsidiary) and Overblog (35 by TF1 inmate) compete also leadership with opposing arguments.

Aggregations of hearing

These clashes have taken a new dimension with the crisis in the advertising market. Because the price of advertising on the Internet, significantly lower in France than in other countries, remains too low to the taste of publishers: the cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), which was 6 euros net average last year, can now get up to 2 euros according to the Agency Carat! "It is a pity that these issues resolved in public rather than between us, said one of the members of the Committee. This could undermine us to advertisers who are already trying to lower prices.

To inflate their position in the ranking Médiamétrie monthly, based on millions of unique visitors, most of the media aggregate the hearing of other sites. This practice is accepted by the Institute on condition "that the third party site displays the logo of the brand." Because of this, TF1 can aggregate the hearing of the AliceADSL.fr site or that of Overblog he has only 35 of the capital. Overblog itself derives much of its hearing of Erog, pornographic site. This aggregation of hearing allowed him to pass Skyblog in the classification of Médiamétrie, last December. For its part, "Le Figaro" adds the hearing of the site the Conjugator, which does not belong to him.

Clarification of the calculation

An attempt to make everyone agree, Médiamétrie wishes to clarify the rules. The Scientific Council recommends that aggregation "cannot take place only between sites owned capitalistiquement (the majority) by the Publisher. Moreover, the sites using the method of cobranding "must have at least 50 of their audience in their category of origin", namely the information. Another sensitive issue: taking into account games in the hearing of a site. "Some"Lottery"sites have implemented a mechanism requiring the user to click on an advertising banner to validate participation in a game." By clicking on the banner the surfer is found on a media site that it boosts traffic. The Institute advocates that these games should be treated as an advertisement and therefore excluded hearing calculations.