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It is worth mentioning that small web-research company, ComScore, represents the de facto authority of online audiences.

It would be worth mentioning that all media has its de fact measurement authorities. For instance in television it's A.C. Nielsen and in radio it's Arbitron. The Internet has ComScore and the services that the company provides cost about $28,000 a month. In case you want to know, there is another web-research company called Nielsen NetRatings, but ComScore is more popular and bigger.

In case a company looks forward to place its ads on the Internet, it will most likely purchase the information that ComScore provides. Thus they hope to analyze whether to spend their money or choose another option. For example ComScore is paid by such giants as CNBS.com and NYTimes.com in order to identify the level of market share and sometimes to value their traffic.

"When P&G tells you that you it won't advertise on your site until you hit a number on ComScore, you have to ask, 'How can I improve my ComScore numbers?'" outlines John Battelle, founder of Federated Media, an online-ad network with headquarters in the Bay Area. This is why ComScore resembles a referee of a web ad game that is currently valued at $25 billion and the number is continuously increasing. The company's biggest disadvantage is that it undercounts audiences.

"Some of the criticism I understand. But some of the stuff is just really irritating," said ComScore's co-founder, Gian Fulgoni. Together with his partner Magid Abraham, they attempt to clarify why their company is misunderstood. Fulgoni stated that the report ComScore made on Google, though highly criticized, proved to be quite accurate sometime later. He said that analysts made incorrect conclusions from the information that the company provided. The report did not present international clicks.

The web-research firm maintains over a million of volunteers who agreed to offer their online activity for monitoring. Surely they expect to receive gift certificates and different other compensations for their generosity. This strategy looks similar to the one that Nielsen has does on TV viewers since the middle of the 20^th century. Due to privacy issues and technical reasons today's contemporary data environment still has to utilize old-school panels in order to monitor what users are doing online. However, the disadvantage of the panel approach lies in self-selection. Wealthy users are not motivated by money and gift certificates as much as others.

In response, Fulgoni says that the company performs phone survey of the panels and wealthy correspondents are motivated differently. For instance, they are offered to take part in a plant-a-tree charity in Central America.

In regard to the smaller sites that the company doesn't take into account, ComScore representatives stated that the methods developed by the firm are suitable to larger websites, due to the fact that small websites do not always appear to be accurate. Fulgoni mentioned that that is a disadvantage of statistics and not of the company.

"People who don't understand statistics will ask, 'How can you possibly project what 200 million people in the U.S. do from a sample of a million?' If you don't believe in sampling theory, next time you go to the doctor and he wants to take a little blood, tell him to take it all," he said.

In the meantime the research company provides a service that offers audience data. Although unwillingly bust most businesses accept it. Despite the fact that the company's shares were rather unpredictable, they went up from $17 to $42 during 2007. ComScore's profits continue increasing and the business registers a steady development.