Can The Internet Audience Be Measured?

It has long been a dilemma for TV, radio and print: Can the audience be measured? Despite the Internet’s detailed information regarding the user’s online activities, many audience measurement services such as Nielsen, ComScore and NetRatings provide mostly statistics based on page views covering panels of Internet users and thus are subject to estimation and statistical errors.

Furthermore, as the use of Internet video and audio entertainment grows, the measurement of page views becomes less relevant. Thus, there is an expanding interest in the amount of time the audience spends on a site. Last week Nielsen introduced a new measure of engagement or time spent. ComScore has announced it will also add such measures sometime in 2007. This shift in audience measurement practices will lead to a period of uncertainty as most Internet advertising rates are currently based on page view and other similar metrics. It is expected the shift in practices will take approximately 12 month before they are fully accepted.

Another issue that looms is: Who is the audience? Programmers can’t decide what content to provide or develop if it is not clear who the audience is…”What is my demographic?”