Yahoo! Sold a Billion Short

Online measurement firm comScore has owned up to understating Yahoo!'s June audience figures by a mere billion page views. The search and content giant issued a press release today after comScore notified it of the error.

Yahoo!'s duration metrics were undercounted by more than 850 million minutes. On comScore's blog, EVP Marketing Linda Boland Abraham said the mistake was 'an isolated, one-time error that did not affect any other client's data'.

The error reduced viewing figures by around 3.0% for the US and between 0.3 and 2% in other major economies, but obviously the discrepancy looks worse when looking at the change from the previous month: Yahoo!'s US page views were in fact down 4.7% but were reported down 7.4%, and US duration was reported down 6.4% instead of the actual 4.3%. The reported UK figures - both page views and duration - were out by a relatively tiny 0.4%.

In its statement, Yahoo! said it had decided to make the announcement 'because it's important that our business partners, advertisers and shareholders have an accurate, independent third-party measurement of our performance'. However things appear to remain friendly, as CEO Carol Bartz added: 'we believe comScore is committed to addressing the error and ensuring accurate and reliable reporting of marketplace performance. Yahoo! is fully prepared to work collaboratively with comScore to develop policies and practices to ensure the timely correction of inaccurate information.'

Web site: www.comscore.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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