Traffic Measurement

February 23, 2008 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

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Towards the end of last year there was much discussion about the issues related to traffic measurement. The two companies often times associate with this concern are Neilsen Online and Comscore. Both organizations according to IAB Chief Executive Randall Rothenberg “still [are] relying on panels, a media-measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago, to quantify the Internet.”

So where do these issues of contention come from? It is in the methodology in which the data is collected. Elinor Mills says is best in here recent column titled, Doing a number on Web site traffic. “The numbers will never be exactly the same because the methods of measurement are different and they measure different things. ComScore and Nielsen Online use data gleaned from samples of Internet users who have monitoring software installed on their computers, while publishers are looking at their actual server log data. Panels give a glimpse into who is visiting a site; server data shows exact visits to the site.”

Because of these issues with traffic measurement publishers and advertisers find it difficult to assess what is in fact a high traffic site from a site that perhaps is not. Regardless, it’s not about the traffic; it is about the quality of the traffic.

There are of course other sources outside of Neilsen Online and Comscore. Hitwise takes it’s data directly from ISP’s so the data, in my opinion is much more accurate. Quantcast derives its rankings from a hybrid model. Taking into account direct data from over 20,000 publishers as well as panel-based data from over a million people Quantcast is commanding both advertiser and publisher attention. Finally there is also Alexa, but the data is really not accurate for three of four days and even then can be shaky.

Long story short, take in the data that you receive with a grain of salt. Some sources like Hitwise are better than others, but none are as finite as on would desire.