Following Nielsen/NetRatings announcement earlier this month about moving from page views as the key metric to time spent on a site, rival ComScore (Nasdaq: SCOR)has refined its methodology as well: it will now split website audiences into heavy, medium and light users. The 20 percent of internet users who spend longest online will be defined as heavy. The remaining audience will be defined as 30 percent medium and 50 percent light, using the same time-based criteria, reports FT.

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Traditionally, websites have reported average time spent figures for their total audience, and this can be misleading as heavy users bring the average figures up. If widely adopted, ComScore’s reforms could encourage advertisers to look beyond the most popular websites and seek out those visited by harder to reach medium and light internet users, the story says. Let’s hope.