Battelle’s post on GData vs. ComScore made me think about how we could potentially really start measuring audiences online.
The data aggregate potential from Google is amazing and also dangerous. It is one thing to favor forecasting the size of an audience based on running Google AdSense javascript, as ComScore claims they are doing, it is another to tweak SERPs based on this javascript. Both of these practices Google denies doing and for good reason. Imagine the down funnel targeting Google could do with SERPs and then also owning the ad inventory on the organic result the user clicks on. I’ve worked with enough big publishers to know of their reliance on Google to aggregate audiences via search; if they thought that running Google javascript could help their search results and maybe even make them more money, they would do it.
The question Battelle posts of what is Google exacltly using to measure uniques could probably best be seen in this patent filing. Patents are generally more transparent than the FAQ’s on a product page. The patent is a little technical for my blood, but my guess is they use unique IPs from searh data, javascript from analyics/adsense, and opt-in tracking. Why would Google network sites show a slant? The chances are high the site runs both analytics and adsense. Again, my best guess.
In thinking about how Google and ComScore are trying to solve a problem as big as measuring the webs flow of information, it got me thinking of who would really be the best at this while also not having the conflicts of interest like a Google. I also wouldn’t say that only Google is the only one conflicted here, ComScore is as well.
My thoughts; what if the browsers got together and agreed to share reader behavior to an open third party system that could provide aggregated data on all the world’s traffic. Let’s call it a coalition and it would be similar to any other open protocol movement. The coalition could also work with websites(who are by their very nature incentivized to get analytics right) to help push their supported browsers over un-supported browsers, similar to the spread firefox movement.
Sampling an audience made sense with older computing technologies, but it doesn’t translate well with the web. The browser, or even the not so friendly ISP level, with a third party open system is one way this could get fixed.
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