The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a set of click measurement guidelines [pdf] yesterday. The guidelines were drafted in partnership with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and large number of other major stakeholders in the online advertising space (noticeably absent from the list of participants was Ask.com and its parent company IAC).

According to the IAB, the purpose of the guidelines is as follows:

• Define the technical life-cycle of a “click” and outline standard methodologies by which clicks should be measured and counted, including provisions for identifying invalid and/or fraudulent clicks.
• Establish standard terms that will help streamline the buying and selling of click-based media.
• Increase transparency and consistency in click measurements for media companies, ad-serving organizations, advertisers, and third-party click auditors.

After reviewing the document, we found a few highlights to share with you. A note in the Click Measurement Definitions section helps answer the common question of how a search engine’s reported clicks might be different than the number of clicks/visits measured by the advertiser on their own site. The reasons listed include latency, user aborts, and 404 errors.

The document states that, “in general, pre-filtration Measured Clicks [clicks on the ad] should always be equal to or higher than Received Clicks [clicks subsequently tracked on the advertiser's site]“. This brings in the issue of filtration. Reported clicks from the search engines generally do not include invalid clicks that were removed by their filtering systems which creates another potential difference in clicks. Finally, the use of javascript and/or pixel tracking on the advertiser’s site may also play into the difference since some visitors may not load the code correctly or might have javascript or images disabled.

On that note, we thought it was good that the guidelines call for disclosure of the methods used by javascript and pixel tracking systems to count clicks and the limitations associated with those methods. This underscores the fact that while online advertising is much more measurable than offline ads tend to be, it is still not 100% accurate.

The section outlining proper counting methods was interesting as well. The guidelines provide for 2 methods: One-click-per-impression, which is self-explanatory, and Multiple-click-per-impression. The second method allows publishers to count more than one click on any given ad impression, provided that they establish a period of time during which a second click would not be counted (to prevent advertisers from being charged for navigational errors like double-clicks). We would like to see disclosure by ad serving organizations of which method they employ (some, like Google, already do – they use the multi-click method).

Importantly, the guidelines also state that invalid click filtration methods, as outlined in the document, must be employed by the ad serving organization in order for their clicks to be counted. While the major advertising platforms have strong track records in this area, our assumption is that many of the smaller players have some catching-up to do. That said, our experience has shown that the threat of click-fraud is generally overstated.

In any case, these guidelines seem to be a step in the right direction. We hope that publishers, media companies, and other ad-serving organizations will take note and take action to meet these guidelines and earn the trust of advertisers.