According to reports, Nielsen agreed late last week to supply numbers for a further month.

The AMAA wrote to members warning that there would be a break from reporting in September as it finalised the new provider for its Web Audit service, which it announced in May.

Despite having been the provider for four years, Nielsen backed out from pitching for the tender saying advertisers were hunting for a “single trusted metrics”.

In a update seen by Australian website Mumbrella, the AMAA said that three finalists companies had made presentations to the selection committee and that it expected that it would “launch the new service and begin tagging websites in September for data provision and an official start of reporting from October 1”.

AMAA’s CEO Paul Dovas told Mumbrella: “An independent review committee representing a cross section of the AMAA membership has assessed a short-list of platform candidates and has made a recommendation to the AMAA who will now proceed with technical and commercial reviews.”

Members who chose to remain with Nielsen were warned that they would lose their audited status if they used auto-refresh – which Nielsen measures.

The memo stated: “Auto-refresh content is not permitted to be counted as additional page impressions under ABA guidelines, due to the potential for significant artificial inflation of stated traffic volumes which can be misleading to advertisers and other interested parties.”