Page views are increasingly being dismissed as a valid measurement target due to the numerous tricks publishers employ to drive up their page view numbers, Mediaweek reports.
Publishers run news stories across multiple pages to drive endless slide shows of ads, and many employ technology that auto-refreshes pages after a pre-determined period of inactivity.
Nielsen Online claims it doesn't count page views that aren't user driven and comScore asks publishers to offer alternative URLs when they auto-refresh content in order to weed out duplicity.
While the practices are admonished by some, many top-level media companies use auto-refresh for a variety of reasons -- whether it's nefarious in nature or purely a function of improved user experience is up for debate.
