• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 16, 2008

For all the debate surrounding online audience measurement, it all comes down to a very simple principle: What is it that you actually want to measure. At least that's how Lynn Bolger, executive vice president-AdSolutions at comScore sees it.

Bolger, an ex-agency media researcher turned online media diva, suggested there are good reasons for the myriad of server-side, user-side and census-based measurement systems in the marketplace, and that they may in fact be designed to deal with different business needs.

“The whole thing really boils down to â€" I think â€" is how does the data relate to your business model,” she said during the “Is A View A View and A Visitor A Visitor?” panel discussion during the afternoon session of OMMA Video in New York.

While that might sound like a tower of research Babel, Bolger points out that the marketplace for online audience measurement hasn't quite established itself to the extent of having a single advertising currency the way Nielsen serves with television.

“The real question â€" especially with video â€" is how all that data relates to what's being sold in the marketplace,” she argued, adding that it's not just how online buyers and publishers define their audiences, but the very unit of advertising sale that they negotiate over. Giving an example of an online video that serves multiple streams over time to render a gross audience for advertisers, Bolger said, “Is that one unit? Should that be one commercial unit? Or should that be 500 commercial units? How does all that data get aggregated, and what do you want it sold on?”

Good questions, Lynn. Maybe a good researcher can help us come up with the answers.