Are Web Ratings Dangerous To Sites?

Freshly Exhumed writes "For website publishers, a poor web rating can be disastrous. Bad television ratings mean television shows get canceled, bad web ratings mean websites go out of business. For advertisers, accurate web ratings are critical to optimize spending. Inaccurate ratings data means advertisers will overspend on poorly performing sites or not advertise on smaller sites whose numbers are really much higher than reported. In the case of Canadian web site Digital Home, already hit with an advertising boycott by Bell Canada over the site's pro-consumer editorial content, the site's owner is now in danger of ending operations, apparently due to the inaccuracies of ComScore rankings. For example, Google Analytics reported Digital Home served up over 2.7 million page views in January to almost 250,000 unique visitors. A web buyer at one of Canada's largest advertising agencies confirmed that ComScore reported just 32,000 visitors. Added to this is ComScore's secretly-installed spyware troubles."

Comments

Live by the ComScore

[Infonaut]

... die by the ComScore

Advertising isn't the only way, and ComScore isn't the only way to do advertising.

Re:Live by the ComScore

[TubeSteak]

Last week, The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced that it had sent a letter to the two companies [comscore and Nielsen//NetRatings] requesting that each company submit to an audit of their web measuring processes due to the huge discrepancies in their numbers.

The IAB, whose 332 members account for 86 percent of U.S. online advertising spending...
[Many paragraphs]
On Monday, comscore responded to the IAB by saying that "comScore's panel methodologies reflect the investment of millions of dollars and years of research and development. We are confident that they will stand the scrutiny of a third-party evaluation or audit."

Part of the story here is that the metrics being used by these companies are being questioned.
And possibly the more important aspect is that it isn't just by digital home, but by an organization that can do something about the funny numbers.

Re:ComScore Measures US Traffic

[cyphercell]

A web buyer at one of Canada's largest advertising agencies confirmed that ComScore reported just 32,000 visitors.

- from the summary

Membership in the forum is free and with over 75 interest groups and 32,000 members, there is always something new and interesting to discuss.

- from digital home under "discuss and learn more"

Interesting relationship between those numbers, eh?

Re:Speaking of cancelled...

[cyphercell]

It debuted in the United States on April 15, 2007 on FOX.

For anyone that's counting that's ten days ago.

Re:Are we missing something?

[jalefkowit]

If this was happening to the New York Times, we'd be up in arms and this would be under "Your Rights Online" or "Censorship." But somehow this is a story about Comscore. I'm not saying that that aspect of the story doesn't have merit, but there's an equally important issue here that needs to be explored.

It's not censorship for an advertiser to decide to stop advertising in a particular publication. Advertisers don't have any obligation, legal or moral, to spend their advertising dollars on one publication over another. If the money you were spending on advertising was actually hurting your sales you'd have to be an idiot not to stop, at least until you could determine if the problem was something you could fix rather than something inherent in the publication (like, say, some horrible offensive language in your ad that you could remove or re-word).

Dealing with issues like this is why most legitimate publications (like the NY Times) maintain a strict separation between the people who do advertising and the people who do editorial content, so that pressure from advertisers can't influence editorial. If an advertiser threatens to walk from the Times, their response is to have their advertising people go beat the bushes for new advertisers, not to stomp their feet about how unfair it is.

Re:Disconnect

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

When you come right down to it you could eliminate every site that carries advertising on the web and I wouldn't notice.

Uh? You do realise you posted that comment on a site that carries advertising?