Limor Peer: "It’s symptomatic of the newspaper industry’s trouble defining itself, that it is unsure how to measure its audience."

"U.S. newspapers’ online audiences grew about 6 percent last year, an industry group reported Thursday, a rare bit of good news for an industry struggling to adapt as readers and advertising dollars continue to migrate online."

"Newsday’s online traffic edged past The Wall Street Journal Online in the month of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online"

"Newsday’s online traffic edged past The Wall Street Journal Online in the month of December, according to the latest data from Nielsen Online"

"[T]he growth of online advertising is being stunted, [publishing] industry executives say, because nobody can get the basic visitor counts straight."

"[E]arly data from Nielson/NetRatings on weekly US unique users suggests the number of users looking at news publisher sites and Google News changed little in the three weeks following Google’s first publication of wire service stories than from the five

"Prisa, the company that owns the Spanish newspaper El Pais, is suing Nielsen for revising downwards the number of unique users of ElPais.com."

OTM looks at Nielsen/Netratings recent decision to focus on time-based web metrics. Abbey Klassen, of Advertising Age says web metrics are more valuable for publishers than advertisers.

Iain Dale, Guido, and Conservative Home now claim about half the traffic levels of the smallest national newspaper web sites…

The US newspaper ABC will for the first time include online audience estimates this autumn.

Inksniffer John Duncan: "like many journalists, I’ve been totally conned by the myth of the print-conquering newspaper website."

"I think the time has come for newspapers to abandon the ABC. … [unlike print metrics, web metrics] changes when the content producers want it to, is inconsistent from one metrics supplier to another, and adapts as consumer habits change."

"Blogs are a good case where ‘time spent’ is more meaningful than page views. Especially since the blogosphere is particularly prone to the ‘quantity over quality’ problem. It’s easy to pump out 20+ posts a day - and that tactic garners a lot of page view

"May saw the first monthly drop in traffic for MySpace since June 2006 and only the second drop since November 2005, according to web research company Nielsen//NetRatings"