Data Reporting: Are we all saying the same thing?

Standardization of data sets is one of the biggest challenges and concern with delivering and interpreting web data. So, how do we know if we are all saying the same thing? Fortunately, the IAB puts forth standards for publishers and metrics providers (like Omniture and WebTrends) to follow. So for anyone measuring "site visits" from omniture data, for example, knows how to define that term. One document of interest today at the OMMA Metrics conference is the IAB Reach Measurements Guidelines.

The challenge then lies in how data is reported to our clients across agencies, and across data sources. Unfortunately, the reality is that they will never match exactly. There is some hope that with the evolution of HTML 5 and univeral tags, this challenge could be overcome. In the meantime, it is up to us to follow the IAB guidelines closely and do our best to explain discrepancies in data.