Web measurement tools need overhaul
April 18th, 2007 by Wendy McAuliffe
In the age of page views, click-throughs and CPAs (cost-per-acquisition), two reports from comScore and Nielsen/Netratings have today raised a big question mark over the way in which the industry currently measures web audiences.
As the BBC reports, measurements based on page-views and cookies could be affected by changing user behaviour, the studies warn.
Net measurement firm comScore found cookies used to track user behaviour could be being over-counted, while the Nielsen/Netratings study argues that page-view measurements are outdated due to an explosion in audio and video content.
While we tend to not plug clients on our blog, it is worth mentioning in this instance that Foviance’s web analytics division has recently discovered in client research that cookie figures can be inflated by as much as 300 per cent.
This has enormous impact on estimates of conversion rates - if we are repeatedly over-counting, then conversions might not be as bad as experts suggest.
Web analytics is often dismissed as the realm of techies, but if we can trust the findings of these reports, it is likely to become a far greater concern for marketers in the future. If online advertising costs are explained by CPA etc, its important that the figures are adding up correctly.
