Growing up and Replacing the Antiquated Page View Metric

Categories: Social Media Measurement, Web AnalyticsPosted on February 15th, 2007

Web Analytics alone are not sufficient in measuring what’s really happening on the web.

Steve Rubel wonders what the next form of measurement attributes will be. I’ve echo’d that the out of the ashes of Page Views will emerge another measurement.

Eric’s already started to measure Engagement
Two days ago, I talked with Eric who writes the amazing Web Analystics Demystified (as well as a few books). We talked about how the term Engagement is being used by different industries — Web Analytics, Advertising and by people like me in Social Media.

Compete is working on Attention
I spent some time with the guys from Compete.com, they’re gathering ‘Attention’ data (how long users stay on websites) as one form of measurement. I video interviewed them, I’ll get that put up soon. (PodTech has quite a big of video footage that’s being put through the editorial process, Robert is amazing in the amount of content he creates)

Dow Jones, Factiva and the community have already crafted out requirements
A few months ago, Dow Jones’s Factiva (They also stopped by at PodTech yesterday as well) and a dozen Social Media, PR experts, and Corporate clients got together in Palo Alto to discuss what are the requirements for new measurement, I encourage you to read the whole post, as well as look at the trackbacks to find out what else was said.

So what will me measure?
We each define and measure it in different ways, and it really leads me to suspect that the future of measurement (and Eric agrees) that will likely be a flexible type of measurement that depends on the environment, client and industry.

Discussion tonight
Tonight is the Third Thursday event in Palo Alto, and the focus in on Social Media Measurement. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to make it toinght. Mike has the details, go if you can and report back to us!

If you want to learn more, check out all my posts tagged “Social Media Measurement”

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 8:47 am and is filed under Social Media Measurement, Web Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hi Jeremiah - “engagement” has a particular resonance in the not-for-profit sector. I pulled together a few thoughts on this recently.

You’re right to suggest that the future for measurement will “depend on the environment, client and industry.” I would say - stating the obvious maybe - that whatever we come up with, we need to ensure what we are measuring is aligned to a particular organisation’s strategic goals.

Thanks for showing leadership here.

Posted by Steve Bridger on February 15th, 2007 at 9:49 am

As a publisher I too agree that page views are quickly losing their meaning, but as advertising-driven publishing business, my relations with advertisers and advertising agencies show me that they are very very comfortable with CPM-oriented ad buys. My gut is the bulk of them will be the last to get comfortable with metrics other than page views.

The first way we’ve gotten them off the page view mindset is to focus on it’s cousin, impressions, but getting many of them to accept an attention metric will be very difficult and take years for the hard core to accept.

Before this point, TV, print, billboard and web we’re all very firm statistics. They like those a lot.

The key to getting them to adopt a new metric will be if the metric can be directly piped into a spreadsheet and translated into conversion numbers they can use for budgeting and success determination. Until they accept that web publisher wanting to show their ads will have to meet their expectations, not the other way around.

Posted by Ted Rheingold on February 15th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

Steve, thanks. Im watching this space carefully, and more and more folks are wanting flexibility.

Ted, hard metrics are a subset of measurement, which are a subset of ‘telling the story’. You’re going to have to figure out how to tell the story to your clients.

On a second note, I’m VERY excited you’ve stopped by. Big fan of your speaking and all you’ve done.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 15th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Steve

Excellent analysis, the graphs were interesting, but I’m sure there’s some other ways to look at it. I’ll be giving this more thought.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on February 15th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

Those who most stand to benefit, decide to measure themselves; make up your own test, and, wow, grade it yourself. And since the goals, needs and objectives will vary so much from differing industries, having various possible outcomes, it’s an impossible task to begin with. It be a lost cause (total fuzziness as a science), with Wild West Silicon Valley snake-oil salesmen on outskirts, selling you possible miracle cures. Can’t lose, keep it all hazy, and no matter what happens, cast it always as the cure for every ailment.

All just marketing psychology with techie fads tossed in the salad mix. You can do what the Psychologists do however, dazzle them with controlled-experiments (surveys and questionnaires) with statistics upon statistics and random types of probability testing. And maybe even come up with some sort of industry professionally-accepted certification program that insures your eternal place in the game. Make up the rules of the game, they can’t ever kick you out.