ComScore and John Battelle's Federated Media (FM) Publishing are partnering on an initiative that hopes to provide an accurate measurement of the traffic to popular blogs and other "conversational media" sites, such as Digg and BoingBoing.

The initiative will go beyond simple server data for sites to also provide the demographics for a site's visitors, comScore says. The company claims the system will finally give the "true audience size" for many of the most popular blogs and social media sites. FM represents some 110 independent conversational media sites, including Digg, PROTRADE, BoingBoing and Dooce.

"The complex nature of blogs and community-driven sites like Digg presents unique measurement challenges," said Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore Networks. "In partnering with Federated Media, comScore will harness their experience with a large network of blogs and consumer generated sites to ensure that the blogosphere has available to it the most accurate and reliable third-party measurement services."

If comScore and FM can create a system to track blog traffic that gains credibility with advertisers, it could be a boon to the blogging sector; the lack of accurate blog-traffic figures has undermined advertising on blogs.