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Saturday, December 16, 2006

Did MySpace Really Beat Yahoo?

The debate over which site had the most November page views reflects the difficulty of tallying Web traffic, and billions of ad dollars are at stake
by Catherine Holahan

On the Web, the competition for most popular site can be as intense as the race for the pennant or even the Presidency. So news that up-and-comer MySpace.com beat incumbent Yahoo! (YHOO) for most monthly page views for the first time in November understandably grabbed headlines.

According to comScore Networks, News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace racked up 38.7 billion page views in November, compared with 38.1 billion for longtime leader Yahoo. But the dispatches concerning the upset were the online equivalent of the famous headline "Dewey Beats Truman."

Almost immediately, the results were called into question. UBS (UBS) analyst Benjamin Schachter left voicemail messages for investors and reporters warning against making decisions on comScore's potentially unreliable data. Yahoo was still the undisputed leader, measured by other key metrics, including unique visitors and time spent on the site. Besides, Nielsen//NetRatings (NTRT), comScore's main competitor, still had Yahoo leading page views in November: 33.4 billion, vs. 29 billion for MySpace and the rest of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media properties.

Focusing on Ad Impressions
The discrepancy has revived complaints about the accuracy of reporting agencies' results, which often differ from companies' own audience measurements (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/23/06, "Web Numbers: What's Real"). It also underscores the rivalry between comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings for recognition as the most trusted source for Web-traffic data. The winner, if one emerges, may set the standard for how site popularity is measured, influencing how marketers dole out billions in online ad dollars each year. Recognizing the high stakes in that tussle, comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings both are refining their tactics.

For starters, in the first quarter of 2007, comScore plans to change how it determines the amount of advertising a Web company shows its audience. To do that, comScore will focus on ad impressions, or the number of times an ad shows up on a page, rather than the number of times a Web page is viewed. The results can vary, depending on how a Web page is designed.

For example, Yahoo and Google (GOOG) are among companies that use a technology called Ajax that can change an ad, influencing the number of ad impressions, even if the user doesn't refresh or click to a different page. Yahoo attributed the 9% drop in its page views, which allowed MySpace to overtake it, to its inclusion of Ajax. Thus, page views—long used by industry analysts to estimate how many ads a company can serve and, thus, potential revenue—is no longer a reliable measurement.

Time Spent on a Site
ComScore is also planning to launch a set of entirely new ad metrics in the second quarter of 2007, according to comScore Chief Executive Officer Magid Abraham. "We are developing some proprietary metrics that are a much better replacement for page views and are actually a better measure of engagement," says Abraham.

Abraham is tight-lipped about specifics, but he says the new techniques will better reflect the influence of new technologies. The company will focus more on time spent on a site than page views. It's worth noting that, by that estimate, Yahoo is the clear winner. Its users spent 42.7 billion minutes on its pages in November. MySpace's users spent a total of 13.8 billion minutes, says Abraham.

(Read More...)

Holahan is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

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