Byline: Simon Dumenco

Oh, how I miss the old days of everybody in media and marketing not only getting away with fudging their numbers but everybody agreeing that, hey, fudged numbers were good enough!

Now, of course, as our expectations for a new, sophisticated sort of new-media New Math have been stoked, nothing adds up. Nothing! Traffic stats from competing metrics firms are vastly, bafflingly different. As former Ad Age columnist Randy Rothenberg, now chief of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, told my colleague Steve Rubel last week, "We are further than nowhere, less than somewhere'' on measurement. Feel better now?

It seems that the only way we'll be able ...