Counting Clicks: Now A Mainstay

In 1999, eyeballs were all the rage. It was the height of the frothy dot-com days, when start-up business models hinged on luring enough people to a free Web site to someday sell advertising on it. Measuring those eyeballs, no matter how much they were worth, looked like an obvious gold mine. Eyeballs matter even more now that legitimate companies' fortunes rise and fall with Internet traffic and the advertising it attracts. ComScore has become one of the most relied-upon barometers for online behavior. It analyzes which sites consumers are flocking to, how much time they spend there and which ads catch their eyes. Advertisers say such data will become even more important as marketing budgets shrink in a weakening economy. Even companies such as Google, which have disputed ComScore's figures, continue to subscribe, and Abraham is sanguine about his firm's future. But although current users of ComScore's information might not drop the service, subscriber growth may not keep up its rapid pace.