Information Request

I have been asked to liveblog a conference within my industry in September, but the organizers are anxious to use a (free) bloghosting service that provides solid statistics on the blog's visibility in terms of hits, etc. Blogger really doesn't do that; to the best of my knowledge, one can get third-party counters that sit on the page, but nothing that yields more complex information. I use MyBlogLog which provides some statistics about visitors to this blog, but again, it's not a source for anything very sophisticated.

I'm seeking information from those of you that might be more knowledgeable than myself. Any feedback from those of you using Typepad? Does typepad give you a good set of statistics? Any other service you'd recommend? Recommendations on how I might get/extract better stats from Blogger?

I'm just putting this out there to see who might know. I have only blogged using this host so have no frame of reference.

Brief Update/Further Clarification: It would appear that google-analytics is also an option for use with Blogger/blogspot. I have added that code to this blog for a test period just to see what I learn. If you have feedback on google analytics, that would also be welcome.

In response to Dorothy W. : I'm not sure what they're looking for, actually; hits is the word used in the email which is, admittedly, rather vague. But I told my colleagues that I'd post the query to a number of social networks and see what came back.