AfterDawn: News

Hulu sees wild data fluctuations

Most online publishers use internal numbers, as well as those reported by Nielsen and comScore, to measure audience viewership. The numbers are never equal, but the discrepancies are usually not too bad. And then there is Hulu.

Last month, Nielsen reported that the popular video site had 8.9 million unique users for the month, while comScore reported a much higher 42 million for the same period. For April, the numbers get even crazier. Nielsen says viewers watched 373 million video streams, but at the same time showed a big decline in unique viewers, moving to 7.4 million for the period. Quantcast however, another online measurement provider, says they see no evidence of a decline in unique viewership.



Says Hulu of the Nielsen numbers: "There is work to be done."

The problem however, is in the fact that online measurement is still an unreliable science which can adversely affect advertising decisions.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 May 2009 14:53

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• 3 comments

• blueboy09

  Don't know about u but these numbers are just what they are just plain numbers thats all and dont mean a DAMN THING. You cant velieve much of what the Internet has in it, especially w/statistics such as these. - BLUEBOY

  16.5.2009 05:33 #1

• Rikoshay

  People can always spoof their views with a bunch of methods, like a proxy, IP address change, different PC, etc. Polls or anything is not gonna get a super reliable statistic with all the ways one person can log onto a website.

  16.5.2009 07:21 #2

• korgoth3

  only real way to know how many unique users is to go by active accounts.

  16.5.2009 11:43 #3