NEW YORK: Yahoo!, Universal McCann, Optimedia and Deutsch are the newest subscribers to the WebRF service in the US, serving as leaders and key adopters of the latest development in online media planning.

Developed jointly by Nielsen//NetRatings and IMS and available globally in 12 countries, WebRF provides media planners the tools to assess the potential success of their Internet advertising campaigns prior to launch, a capability that was previously only available to traditional media. WebRF, claims the company, is the online industry's only comprehensive reach and frequency media planning tool for Internet audience measurement.

WebRF combines Nielsen//NetRatings research on Internet consumer behaviour with IMS software technology to offer a wide breadth of reach and frequency analyses. WebRF gives buyers and planners the ability to map campaigns for specified target markets, identifying the pages and sites with the highest proportion of audience within a specified budget. The service also provides media planners with key perspectives into audience behaviour, enabling packages of pages or sites to be combined for promotion to many different demographic targets. For advertisers, WebRF helps to better assess placement of online advertising and keeps track of how effectively budgets are being managed, says an official release.

Other worldwide WebRF clients include Euro RSCG, McCann-Erickson, Grey Media Beyond Interactive, One Media, MindShare, Carat and NineMSN.