Sound Alliance boss: Advertisers have woken up to audit

The battle for website traffic auditing has largely been won, one of the champions of audit transparency has suggested.

Neil Ackland, CEO of The Sound Alliance – publisher of music and culture sites including inthemix, Faster Louder and SameSame – made the comments in a video interview with Encore.

Ackland said that last year’s furore over auditing has forced many smaller players to prove their traffic claims or face losing advertisers because clients now understood the questions they need to ask.

The issue was a controversial one because while most advertisers understand the value of an audited circulation number when it comes to print titles, there was less unanimity in the online space. Many publishers had been relying on self reported numbers or internal Google Analytics although these numbers can include overseas or other questionable traffic.