Meet the little guys who are challenging ComScore, NetRatings; Quantcast, others may not unseat giants, but they do offer advertisers more ways to measure traffic online.(Digital)

Advertising Age, August, 2007 by Klaassen, Abbey

Byline: ABBEY KLAASSEN

aklaassen@adage.com

Move over, Nielsen/NetRatings and ComScore-a new crop of measurement services with names such as Quantcast, Compete and Alexa have popped up, vying to provide quick and free data on a larger swath of sites.

OK, it's unlikely the two web-measurement giants will be unseated anytime soon, but unlike in other media, where multiple measurement companies have eventually been whittled down to one dominant player, some advertisers are cautiously welcoming the multiple audience-measurement options available online.

"Where ComScore and Nielsen fall down particularly is in tracking small sites,'' said Harry Case, director-analytics, MindShare Interaction. He cites the example of a pharmaceutical...

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