So which do you believe? Both
companies stand by their research methods. Understanding advertisers' woes, the IAB recently called for a public audit and accreditation of their research. "It's a really rough science," said company
CEO Randall Rothenberg. But what will that do? How do you audit a business as tricky as Web measurement, anyways? Counting page views and unique visitors is hard enough, especially when you consider
heavier consumption on portable devices and handsets.
The new question is whether page views are an accurate representation of a site's worth. After all, not all page views are created equal, says comScore CEO Magid Abraham--whose company yesterday announced it would measure things like widgets and video downloads and expand its search measurement to include eBay and Amazon. Nielsen/NetRatings several weeks ago said it was changing its de facto traffic measurement to time spent on a given Web property. Nevertheless, they embrace the public audit.