Josh Chasin, comScore's chief research officer, wound up OMMA Metrics conference by breaking the news that there is no "magic metric" to simplify online measurement because of the inherent complexity
of the medium. There is no equivalent of the GRP or Nielsen as an arbiter of TV ratings. He notes that the Internet adds "engagement" as a third axis to the traditional media measures of reach and
frequency, but that there's no clear metric for engagement. He presentation offers a long list of candidates: time spent, click-throughs, visibility, "emotional connections, traffic driven to a Web
site. But none has emerged as the de facto key metric. Chasin offered no easy answer for the medium "with the most measures" as he has taken to describing the Internet. "That's just the nature
of the beast and we need to embrace it." And without complexity, where would comScore and all the other Web measurement and analytics firms be, anyway?
