ClickZ: The State of Interactive Research
Online marketers thought in the beginning that all the research numbers would start to converge together eventually, as research panels got larger and more accurate. Different sources were supposed to reveal the same common truth. It ain't so. Nielsen's 8.2 million CNN online users were comScore's 5.5 million. (Want to guess which one is being shown to media buyers?) Worse, neither of these sets of numbers matches the log files from the site.
It might be better than the squishy TV viewing figures (at least it doesn't have congressional hearings airing opposition to methodological improvements), but the online marketing industry isn't yet at the point where it can put on superior airs about general online metrics.
