Audience measurement and Web analytics systems are like the yin and yang of online metrics. Yin and yang are different, opposing forces, but they also complement each other. Think of Web analytics and audience measurement data in the same way: different, sometimes in opposition, but complementary.

Randall Rothenberg of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, meet Jim Sterne of the Web Analytics Association. There are a hundred reasons why you two should be at the same table.

Traditional Web analytics focuses on all of the activity on your own domain, but how do you measure your content when you unleash it into the wild across the Internet? The solution is a new set of metrics (and eventually standards) for how to quantitatively measure the power of viral content.

With six plus years spent in the search trenches, and prior years of Web site building and other forms of old-school marketing behind me (fax, broadcast, anyone?), I find myself in the most excellent and interesting position of overseeing online media for a client who has been highly successful building a brand over many decades with "traditional" media. Hurray! What a compelling and ever-changing way to spend one's days. But here is the crux: We set our sights on expanding upon our combined successes with search with other forms of interactive media -- and find that to be truly successful, …

Last week the New York Times ran an article in which the headline posed the question, "How Many Hits? It Depends Who's Counting." The author began the article by wondering how many people had visited Style.com last month, citing several disparate estimates. But hits, as readers of this column probably know all too well, are not people.