MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman, citing inaccuracies over MLB.com’s audience measurements, wants Nielsen Online to stop including the baseball site in its coverage, Mediaweek reports. Nielsen Online’s response is, essentially, too bad: the company does not stop publishing traffic numbers simply because a site doesn’t like its findings. In any case, the gap between the traffic cited by each is extreme: in September, MLBAM said it received an average of 60 million uniques, while Nielsen Online counted only 11 million. Part of the discrepancy can be pointed to MLBAM’s decision to count global visitors compared to Nielsen Online’s U.S.-only figures. An MLBAM told me that the international represents only five percent of the site’s visitors. Secondly, Nielsen claims that its method avoids duplicative visits since it doesn’t count individuals who use the multiple computers on the same day.
Complaints from major online media companies have risen over the panel-based sampling methods used by Nielsen Online and other measurement firms like comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) in the past year. While the Interactive Advertising Bureau has been working with comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings on submitting to audits, Bowman has been on a one-man crusade. In November, he called on the Audit Bureau of Circulations to establish an audit-based system, similar to the system it has measuring newspapers and magazines readership. The MLBAM spokesman also told me that the talks with the ABC are still ongoing, but have been delayed by the holiday season.
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