• June 24, 2008

Quantcast has rolled out a hybrid Web audience measurement model, which combines cookie-based visitor counts from publishers with third-party, panel-based audience estimates.

The accuracy of both cookie-based and panel-based audience counts has been a long-standing source of conflict between online media buyers and sellers. Buyers are sometimes skeptical of publisher-supplied visitor counts, while third-party panels often do not include, or accurately represent niche properties with less than a million or hundred-thousand unique monthly visits.

Quantcast's new hybrid model aims to take the best of both systems to scale in an open interface. Building on the data supplied by the millions of Web sites that are tracked via Quantcast's "quantified" cookies, the new measurement model takes into account factors like frequency of visits over time and work vs. home usage that can cause discrepancies between cookie- and panel-based counts.

According to Bill Bradford, SVP of content strategy at Fox Broadcasting Company, the hybrid model is bringing online media buying out of the "dark ages." "The Quantcast model finally delivers a solution which fully exploits the direct measurement capability of digital distribution, in the context of people, which is essential for delivering enhanced value to our consumers and our advertising partners," Bradford said.

--Tameka Kee