[blueskittle]

Google Analytics is used primarily for internal reporting and analysis. bscorecardresearch is part of ComScore, which is a third-party reporting company. Advertisers often require publishers to provide third-party reports for traffic so that they can validate the ad campaign numbers that the publisher reports. Chartbeat and others can provide supplemental reporting to a publisher if they think that there are gaps with what Google Analytics provides.

[iSnow]

Thanks, I still believe the inclusion of yet another analytics tool is madness, but the point about publishers is new to me.