"The Interactive Alliance has already brought together so much of the industry in acknowledging common principles, it will make our job easier to bring about publisher cooperation," said Bill Densmore, Newshare's president. "And the CASIE working group principles strike a laudable balance among marketing requirements for a user census, the consumer's need for ease-of-use and democracy's need to assure personal privacy."

CASIE is a joint project of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies with the support of the Advertising Research Foundation. It seeks to define a universal standard for third- party verification of audience claims by Web publishers which gathers uniform usage data about individual users, while respecting their privacy.

"Audience measurement efforts which adhere to the CASIE principles should help grow interactive media and benefit all those involved, including advertisers, media buyers and sellers," said Judy Black, senior partner and director of the BJK&E Interactive Group and also the chair of the CASIE research subcommittee.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations and its technical support affiliate, WebTrack, have agreed to be participants in the work of The Alliance. Representatives of over 40 other industry organizations have agreed to participate as alliance advisors.

"Clickshare and The Interactive Alliance share a philosophy of cooperatively lifting the Interactive lake to raise all ships," noted Bill Harvey, president and CEO, Next Century Media. "It turns out that the Internet, which arose like topsy with no central direction, can become a more valuable business for content providers and advertisers by the same process of decentralized collaboration."

The advertising and publishing industries are struggling to reach a technology and consensus for the measurement and tracking of World Wide Web usage. The Newspaper Association of America has convened a Nov. 14 summit in Dallas so that major publishers and system vendors can discuss audience measurement principles. Newshare is among invited participants in the summit.

Next Century Media is a team of advertising and media-research executives committed to maximizing the effectiveness of Interactive media worldwide for advertisers, agencies, network operators, content providers and consumers. Next Century Media clients include advertisers and agencies collectively representing over $23 billion in annual advertising investments, plus a large number of network operators.

Arbitron NewMedia, a unit of the Arbitron Company, was established in 1994 to provide a wide range of survey research, consulting and methodological services to the cable, telecommunications, direct broadcast satellite, online and new media industries. The Arbitron Company is a media information firm providing services to broadcasters, advertisers and agencies. The Arbitron Company is a division of Ceridian Corp.

"Clickshare" and "Newshare" are U.S.-registered servicemarks of Newshare Corp.