A New Way to Tell Who's Watching - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Industry Standard, The, August 28, 2000 by David Lake

Audit Central is a new site that promises to publish difficult-to-get traffic figures.

GAUGING ONLINE TRAFFIC IS SOMEthing of a puzzle. Until now, Internet investors and media buyers have relied largely on ratings firms such as Media Metrix, which operate like TV ratings firms. They monitor a sample group of surfers and derive audience estimates from the results.

But there's another way. Site auditors -- independent third parties -- analyze a site's internal server records and estimate traffic. Auditors have been around for years, but their reports have been difficult to get: You'd have to contact a site directly, ask if a report exists and request a copy.

Now a new Web site, Audit Central, promises easier access. Run by competing online auditors ABC Interactive, BPA International and Engage I/Pro, Audit Central is set to launch in September with around 600 reports. The firms will publish only audit reports from clients that have made their data publicly available.

One of the challenges facing this collaborative effort was to come to consensus about basic principles. Different firms have different ways of counting traffic, such as by pageviews or unique visitors. "We have been working with these firms on audit principles and metrics for almost two years," says Jim Spaeth, president of the Advertising Research Foundation, which is working with online agencies to develop audit standards. "We have all agreed on common definitions and common metrics where buyers can receive reports from any of the auditors and know they are consistent."

If the site proves a popular way to research ad buys, advertisers could quickly put the heat on Web sites to have their traffic regularly audited by a third party -- a must for magazines, newspapers and other media, but not a widespread practice online. "Although there are no written rules, the offline buying community makes media audits mandatory by usually refusing to buy from a firm that has not been audited," says Spaeth.

Audits have their advantages; and numbers come from internal server records and include traffic from all sources -- work, school, libraries and international surfers -- while ratings firms may not include all those. But audits have their drawbacks as well. Ratings firms can monitor demographic information on the surfer, whereas log-file data can't. Audits can also mistake spidering technologies or robots for an actual visitor.

Rather than replace ratings data, site audit statements most likely will become a complementary source of traffic data, much the same way they are used in offline media.

"When negotiating [ad costs], media buyers use [audit statement] data," says Gerard Broussard, Ogilvy One's director of media metrics and analytics. "But to describe the people who visit the Web site, we will continue to use ratings data."