ON APRIL 1, IT company TNS SK will introduce iMeter, a new programme for recording internet activity.
The programme resembles the Nielsen rating system used to record the public's television viewing habits in the United States. A selected group of people from the public will have the iMeter installed on their hardware to monitor which websites they use and for how long. So far, the programme works only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and Mozilla's Firefox browser.
Websites that use iMeter will collect information on how many hits they receive and demographic data on the users that can be analysed for advertising purposes.
According to Ivan Šimek, head of TNS SK, 2,000-3,000 people are already using the programme. The company is hoping to reach 5,000.
"The project's trial phase will probably end at the end of March," Ivan Šimek told the Medialne.sk website. At that point, TNS SK plans to sell the data it collects to servers and advertising agencies.
What differentiates iMeter from the competition, such as the Mediaresearch company's AIMmonitor, is that iMeter measures users' activities on all websites, not just its subscribers.
The largest websites currently use information from AIMmonitor in combination with data from iAudit, an older programme by TNS SK.
