How do I prove to a client/advertiser that my site's analytics numbers are what I say they are?

Question

I have been asked to provide recommendations on "Verified Analytics" for the next iteration of my company's site. Verified to mean that when we sell ad space, it's based on a number of page-views, and the people who buy that space want a way to verify that the numbers we give them are the actual numbers we're delivering.

I have turned to The Google and the only services I can find for this sort of thing revolve around Google Analytics and the sale of a domain name. I export my analytics numbers to a PDF, have Google email the PDF to my auctioneer, and they look for signs of tampering. If no signs of tampering are found they put a little "Verified" badge on the domain auction. (Here)

Other than this, and something similar on another domain sales site, I haven't found anything like what I've been asked to find.

Currently we are using Google Analytics, however I've been also asked to recommend a replacement for that based on the ability to be verified. I'd rather just stick with Google Analytics since we also use Google for advertising.

Answer 1

Hi Bryson

Online Audience Measurement is a term to search for - you're looking at providers like Quantcast, Comscore or Compete. These work alongside, rather than replace your current web analytics package.

Answer 2

Google analytics is a third party service, so you can't modify the stats data yourself anyway. If google is sending them the report directly there's not even scope for you to be editing the numbers so their concern is more paranoia than reasonable.

a) You can add another user in google analytics and give them report-only access. This way they can look at the stats themselves.

b) Add another hits tracking service such as http://www.hitslink.com/ and give the client access to these reports too.

Quantcast / Comscore / Compete all make estimates of site traffic based on limited amounts of data. As an ad buyer I would never take these stats as proof of anything really.