LETTERS

Apple or orange?

We at NexTag, one of the firms included in your January article about online comparison shopping (“Shopping around”), wanted to clarify a common point of confusion illustrated in the chart that accompanied the article.

In the first row of that chart, which detailed each comparison shopping site's “size of audience,” many of the numbers listed were based on differing criteria in such a way that your readers may misinterpret the relative sizes of the leading players in the comparison shopping market. Verifiable and nonverifiable numbers were mixed, as were the number of unique visitors vs. the number of overall site visits. The most accurate way to compare the players in a given market is to use verifiable “unique visitor” numbers from either Nielsen/NetRatings or ComScore.

Based on Nielsen/NetRatings, NexTag garnered 12 million unique visitors in December — making us one of the larger comparison shopping companies. It appears that many of the other companies included in the chart provided their own numbers and didn't necessarily proffer unique visitor numbers but instead listed total visits per day or month. This leads to an “apples to oranges” comparison, since many people return to comparison shopping sites multiple times per month.

Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight on a subject that continues to confuse and confound people more than 10 years after the advent of the Web.
Garth Chouteau
PR director, NexTag