Internet trade organisations across the world have agreed on a series of standards to measure online advertising that they hope will enable the medium to compete more effectively with television and newspapers.
The organisations involved claim the detailed series of guidelines, which will apply across the US, Europe and Asia, represent the first time that a medium has collaborated globally to agree a set of standards.
TV, print and billboards, by contrast, have different methods of buying and selling advertising across the world.
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the UK umbrella organisation for ad-funded websites, the new guidelines are designed to hasten the growth of internet advertising spend by simplifying the buying and selling process for advertisers, marketers and publishers.
For the fist time the guidelines also offer a detailed definition for counting an "ad impression" online, seen as a critical component in establishing consistent measurement of the number of "hits" on a particular advert.
Major websites such as AOL, Yahoo! and MSN hope the launch of the new guidelines will enable them to create a viable global advertising currency that is easily understood by advertisers and their agencies.
They also recommend that all the technology used to "serve" adverts to websites is independently audited by a third party, in an effort to increase confidence in the medium.
Advertisers have long complained that internet advertising is too complicated to buy and measure, a situation that some in the industry believe is a hangover from the early days of the internet boom when advertising money flowed online without the need for accountability.
"We are very pleased to announce this significant milestone in campaign measurement guidelines, which enables publishers to provide further transparency in the advertising sales medium and establish consistency for the marketplace," said Todd Teresi, the vice president of sales at Yahoo! and chairman of Interactive Advertising Bureau's measurement taskforce.
"The work of these organisations now allows the marketing community to focus on using the internet to create the most innovative campaigns possible."
The growth of internet advertising has been one of the bright spots in an otherwise moribund advertising marketplace over the last two years.
Recently released figures from PriceWaterHouse Coopers showed that it had grown 76% in the first half of 2004 compared with the previous year.
Big-budget spending by the likes of BMW, BT and Audi has helped push the UK's online revenues in the last six months to £266.8m.
Much of the growth has been driven by the popularity of sponsored search, through which companies pay to have links to their websites listed alongside the traditional results on search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo!. Having overtaken cinema advertising last year, the internet now commands a 3.24% share of the billions spent on advertising in the UK every year. It now has the radio industry, which takes a 3.7% share of all advertising revenue, in its sights.
But there is still a massive lag between internet consumption and the amount of money spent advertising on the medium. Danny Meadow-Klue, the president of IAB Europe, said he believed the work on standards would help close that gap.
"The internet industry is leaping enthusiastically at the challenges of building global standards. These are landmark moments in a truly groundbreaking medium," enthused Mr Meadows-Klue, who announced last week that he would step down as president of the IAB once a replacement was found.
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