Nielsen: No correlation between visitors, profits

If one looked at Nielsen Online's top 10 list of unique visitors for daily newspapers in the US, there seems to be no correlation between unique traffic and profitability. Although NYTimes.com registered No. 1 on the list with 16,546,000 unique visitors, The New York Times is questioning Nielsen's survey, which asserts that the site's traffic declined 8% compared to April 2008. The Times claims internal records and competing independent surveys do not show a traffic decline. So why is the Times fighting Nielsen? For starters, Nielsen traditionally is the standard bearer for media metrics, and given the newspaper publisher's parent, New York Times Co., lost $61.6 million in its latest quarter, the bad news could discourage future online ad sales, thereby worsening its financial position. It could even impact its restructuring efforts, which include layoffs, dividend cancellation, an investment from Carlos Slim, newspaper closures and a possible sale of its stake in the Boston Red Sox and classical radio station WQXR-FM. The Times isn't alone in questioning Nielsen's metrics.