Monthly Mavens and Menaces
of Measurement

Do you think you know a suitable candidate for our Measurement Maven or Menace award? Send us your nominations.

This month’s Mavens are

Gary Getto
of Surveillance Data, Inc. (SDI)

and
Angie Jeffrey
of PRTrak.

What is it that they say about leaders? Something about getting shot in the back, dying first, etc, etc. But what would we do without them? That’s what I was thinking when I heard Gary (who runs SDI) and Angela (who runs PRTrak) speak on July 30th to a collection of research vendors, clipping companies and other industry thought leaders on the hot topic of Internet circulation standards. What SDI and PRTrak have done is to work with ComScore to include Internet circulation figures in their database alongside Nielsen ratings for broadcast and BPA figures for print. (See “A Standard for Internet Measurement at Last?”, also in this issue, for a more detailed discussion.)

Their pitch to the industry was: Let’s all agree on a standard and get on with evaluating results, rather than endlessly debating whether sampling or census is a better way to go. With its purchase of Media Metrix, SDI argues that ComScore now has by far the largest panel, and the strongest offering, and includes most of the publications we would want numbers on.

We hope the industry adopts SDI’s standards for Internet circulation, but even if it doesn’t, The Measurement Standard still wants to acknowledge the vision and guts necessary to put the proposition on the table. —KDP

And the monthly Menace Award goes to the 15% of IABC members who admit to not measuring performance against objectives. (As sited in IABC's publication Communications World, Aug-Sept, 2002.) —KDP