If Jim does not work for Nielsen, he probably should... :)

On 7/13/07, Jim Novo <jim@...> wrote:
>
> > Time-based metrics have utility in context of user needs, site
> objectives,
> > and goals. As a stand-alone metric for comparing overall performance or
> > engagement across different sites that fulfill different informational,
> > navigational, or transactional needs, I think it's misleading and easily
> > fooled. On many sites rich media or AJAX functionality are only small
> > components of a site's overall web experience.
> >
> > More importantly, I also don't immediately see how "total time online"
> > *directly* ties to revenue, like the page view.
>
> Judah, man, you know I love ya and think you're a very smart guy, and I
> agree with what you are saying - at the site level. But I don't think
> that's the issue.
>
> Let me suggest we all push the reset button on this topic for a second and
>
> look at it from the perspective of the Nielsen / comScore / agency
> complex.
> From the point of view of *their* business model, just like you would look
>
> at the analytics for your own site based on your own model.
>
> Kick this discussion up to a macro perspective.
>
> Right at the top, let's be clear that we are talking about a change in the
>
> way web sites are **ranked*, correct? This has nothing to do with actual
> execution, it is simply a ranking system. All they are saying is it makes
> sense to them - and does anybody think this was done without supporting
> data
> of some kind? - to rank web sites by duration of visit as opposed to page
> views. That's it. They're not saying anything about how to analyze a site,
>
> how you should analyze your site, etc.
>
> They are changing a ranking system, and they have decided it makes more
> sense to rank sites by "quality" as opposed to "quantity", by "engagement
> with the media" as opposed to "velocity of the media". On the face of it,
> if I am a buyer of display media, this makes sense, because I want to buy
> "weight", not velocity. I can't get weight from a 3 second visit, or if
> 50%
> of the visits are 1 page visits. Think about it. Frequency or velocity
> misrepresents the value of the media.
>
> So let's drill into what this idea looks like in the real world. If I am
> buying media for a global packaged goods company, I'm not thinking about
> sites except for a very few instances. I'm buying tonnage across networks
> online and offline - TV, radio, magazine, web.
>
> I need a thesis of some kind when I'm doing this to have any rigor at all
> -
> I want to reach a certain type of audience, with a certain level of
> repetition, etc. I reach certain people with certain repetition and I
> achieve "weight" that translates into awareness / trial that translates
> into
> sales.
>
> Whether you believe in that model or not, that's the way it is done,
> because
> they can only work with the data they have. They don't have granular
> information, and they don't really need it, because their own models show
> that **it works**, over and over. You buy X audience weight, you get Y
> results. You can confirm that with market tests and scanner data. The
> model works.
>
> So you're this buyer, and you are looking at the web. You know there is
> audience on the web you want to reach. But the current media buying model
> doesn't work, your media mix models tell you that when you buy weight on
> the
> web *as it is currently defined** nothing happens - there are no
> incremental
> sales. Awareness, OK maybe, (if there is a way to prove that isn't really
> coming from the TV), but no sales.
>
> So the display ad buying model that works everywhere else in electronic
> media is broken for the web. You start to think about it, talk to people
> about it, and you think, hey wait a minute, in every other electronic
> media,
> we look at duration. Duration is a - admittedly weak - proxy for
> engagement, and we all know it's not "accurate", but it is precise.
> Precise
> because it is always wrong in exactly the same way.
>
> Then you start thinking about the behavior, visits to web sites. And it
> strikes you that a lot of this activity is simply not really conducive to
> the idea of "weight", because there is no substance to it. It's a lot of
> thrashing around and so forth, and in many cases, people don't even see
> the
> ads because they are not really "engaged with the page", if you know what
> I
> mean.
>
> And that's probably why we can't get any weight on the web, because the
> whole Frequency side of the equation is screwed up. Frequency on the web
> is
> not the same as Frequency on TV or Radio - it's different. The Web is
> different, as the chant always goes, right? So let's admit that?
>
> Frequency on the web is busted, it's not the same as Frequency on TV or
> Radio. So we have to compensate for that, we have to weed out the thrash
> that is low value. One way to do that is to use duration as a proxy for
> Frequency, a different way to measure engagement.
>
> We know people are generally "engaged" listening to radio or watching TV
> at
> some level. Sure, there is a ton of noise in that, but like I said, it is
> always wrong in the same way. It's consistent. The average percentage of
> people going to get a beer during the TV ads is always the same. The fact
> they do this doesn't really matter, only the consistency of outcome for
> the
> media buyer and his or her boss matters.
>
> I buy X weight, I get Y sales.
>
> This idea of using duration as a "screen" is fundamentally no different
> than
> excluding one page visits in key metrics, or excluding robots and spiders,
>
> or any of the other things we do in web site analysis to get cleaner data
> out of a really dirty dataset. It's a filter.
>
> Now, you start to think about the future, and you think about mobile, and
> in-game, and all the social networks that think they are going survive off
>
> display ad revenue, and whatever else is coming down the line. And you
> think to yourself, look, the more interactive the environment, the more
> this
> matters, because there can be all kinds of thrashing around in these other
>
> media too.
>
> All kinds of opportunity for an "impression" that isn't really an
> impression, because the visit is too quick, or it is too focused on a
> task.
> These quick hits are like 1 page visits, they lack weight, they shouldn't
> be
> counted.
>
> But now back to the reality of executing. There is no way I can analyze
> all
> of this, I can't possibly manage a network on a global basis that is
> looking
> at all these reasons a web site analyst can come up with why I'm not
> measuring things correctly. I need a damn standard, something I can use
> globally at the macro level across all these platforms that gives me some
> sense of "weight" that I don't get with Frequency in an interactive
> medium.
> And the easiest and most precise - though incredibly inaccurate - standard
> I
> can come up with to do that is duration.
>
> It is universal, it is stable.
>
> And I need the most stable thing I can get, because I need to plug it into
>
> models and try to figure out how to buy weight, how to impact sales.
>
> I need a least common denominator representation of engagement, to tell me
>
> that there is at least a chance in hell visitors saw my ad. And I can use
> this LCD to create a ranking system that - on a macro basis, with a lot of
>
> noise, but consistent error - tells we where I am most likely to find
> "weight".
>
> Does the above make any sense at all to you folks?
>
> Jim Novo
> jim@... <jim%40jimnovo.com>
> Web Site: http://www.jimnovo.com
> Blog: http://blog.jimnovo.com/
>
>
>


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