KEY POINTS:
A third international website - MSN - could stay out of the New Zealand standard for measuring online traffic.
The Yahoo!Xtra commercial says "good things happen when X meets Y".
But the break-up of XtraMSN to create two websites - Yahoo!Xtra and MSN New Zealand - has been causing grief for Nielsen Netratings, the research service advertisers use when buying space online.
Telecom Xtra's partner Yahoo! has a policy of not allowing a third party such as Netratings to "tag" or track users for its website.
Google New Zealand also follows this policy, with the two websites preferring to use their own numbers.
And now a third player - Telecom Xtra's jilted partner MSN New Zealand, now linked with ACP Magazines and TV3.co.nz - is considering whether it will remain with Nielsen Netratings.
MSN spokesman Lee Williams confirmed talks were under way about inclusion in the tagged surveys by Netratings. He expected the issue would be settled soon.
Yahoo!, Google and MSN are all members of New Zealand's Internet Advertising Bureau representing big websites.
The bureau is using Netratings' new industry standard for internet traffic as a way to attract advertisers online.
Martin Gillman of media buying ad agency Total Media said that the old XtraMSN was typically the second busiest website and its absence was affecting the results.
"Here we are a few months after the change from XtraMSN to Yahoo!Xtra was announced and it is still not clear how this site will be measured," he said.
Internet Advertising Bureau chief executive Mark Evans said the industry, including Netratings, was working on a way that Google and Yahoo! traffic could provide information other than using the tags - the devices attached to websites that measure traffic that Google and Yahoo! do not like.
He rejected suggestions that the online advertising sector had been slow to react to Xtra changing hands.
It was a small hiccup in the system as the online industry sought to develop while taking account of the growing importance of global websites.
Michael Carney of Grey Worldwide was also relaxed. He said that Netratings was just once source for advertisers to know website uptake.
