Why no currency for online measurement?
As noted at the outset, the online measurement landscape remains extremely fractured. Two major firms, Nielsen NetRatings and comScore, are vying to become the industry standard in panel‐based audience measurement; several smaller firms also compete in this arena. But as the next section explores in detail, publishers who subscribe to one (or both) of these typically also employ census‐based audience measurement, which in the online world means analyzing server‐side records of audio, video, and text pages served out over the Internet. (Many companies offer this kind of analysis; two leading services are Omniture and Google Analytics.) Meanwhile a third kind of measurement firm — Hitwise is an example — measures audiences using data aggregated from internet service providers (ISPs).8offline world might be polling retailers about who is buying what magazines. Finally any number of startups are attempting to measure audiences and activity on new platforms such as mobile devices and social networks.
Why hasn’t a measurement currency emerged online? The preceding review of traditional media currencies begins to point to an answer — first, in the unprecedented abundance of data about online audiences and behaviors available from multiple sources, and second, in the limited role third‐party ratings play in planning and paying for online ad campaigns. The following two sections will review each of these threads in turn, pointing to a basic decoupling of audience measurement and advertising. Ultimately this analysis suggests that though a single standard for estimating audience size may emerge, it won’t play the pivotal role that measurement currencies have in the past.