How do I prove to a client / advertiser that my analytic site numbers are what I say?
I have been asked to provide proven analytics recommendations for the next iteration of my site. It has been confirmed that when we sell ad space, it is based on multiple pageviews, and people who buy that space want to verify that the numbers we provide them are the actual numbers we provide.
I reached out to Google and the only services I can find for this kind of thing are related to Google Analytics and domain name selling. I am exporting my analysis numbers to a PDF, have emailed the PDF to my auctioneer by Google and they are looking for signs of fake. If no sign of counterfeiting is found, they place a small "Verified" badge on the domain auction. (here)
Other than that, and something similar on another domain sales site, I didn't find anything similar to what I was asked to find.
We are currently using Google Analytics, however I was also asked to recommend a replacement based on validation capability. I'd rather just stick with Google Analytics since we also use Google for ads.
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Google analytics is a third-party service, so you cannot change the statistics data yourself. If Google sends them a report right there, not even for you to edit the numbers, so their concern is more paranoid than reasonable.
a) You can add another user to google analytics and give them report-only access. Thus, they can look at the statistics themselves.
b) Add another hit tracking service such as http://www.hitslink.com/ and also give the customer access to these reports.
Quantcast / Comscore / Compete against all site traffic estimates based on limited data. As an ad buyer, I will never take these statistics as proof of anything really.
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