Digital News South Africa

Watching you surf

Internet measurement has always focused either on the number of page impressions or site hits only, with nothing being known about the visitor, but this is going to change with a software web-meter, which tracks the person's Internet activities.

The European Media Research Organisation (EMRO), held its recent annual meeting and conference in South Africa, and one of the papers presented at the conference covered Internet measurement. The Dutch explained how they are measuring Internet usage, an area where real progress is at last being made.

The Dutch have now put into practice a software web-meter, similar to SAARF's TAMS meter for television, but which tracks the person's Internet activities. Like the TAMS panel, you have full demographic information on these people, and so have information both on the person and the Internet behaviour.

"This is the first indication that Internet measurement is at last being done in a way which is acceptable to media audience researchers, combining both demographics with consumption patterns," says Dr Paul Haupt, CEO of SAARF.

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