> I've been able to simplify it down to how it matters to web folks:

> Engagement is "Apparent Interest"

> While it's been argued that one can be engaged and never measured, I
don't care, as we won't be able to measure!  It's "Apparent" because
they've done something on the site, or paid attention, or interacted
with the site, or even a casual gesture.

Right.  It's really not worth measuring something if you can't take any
action of it, and to be worth taking action on, it has to have some kind of
measurable value.  Otherwise, there is no point in measuring it.

But, "done something" or "paid attention" are actions without a *time*
element, and I don't think you have "engagement" on an action alone.  If so,
you are saying there is no difference between someone who paid attention for
30 minutes and someone who paid attention for 30 seconds; no difference
between someone who posted last month and someone who has not posted in a
year.  Is that really true?  I don't think so.

Time can be used to describe the duration of an action, and also can be used
to describe how long it has been since an action.  Both describe how
involved someone is with the action, how engaged they are.

Engagement has to capture this idea of "being involved", or it's not really
any different from all the other stuff people currently measure.  It has to
capture the idea that someone who is involved is more valuable than someone
who is not involved.  And the reason is this: someone who is more involved
is more likely to create value for the company *in the future* than someone
who is less involved.

The value of having this knowledge is not very hard to imagine, at least it
shouldnt be hard to imagine for marketing people.

Nielsen / comScore didn't make a change like this for the heck of it, there
is something driving it, and that means the agency / media buying complex.
The money, in other words.  And that money, collectively, is probably smart.
In this case, I think there is pressure to get on with applying the same
standards to web media as are applied to other electronic media.

At this point, "duration" is probably the best these folks can do with the
time variable, and for the advertising business, it's not hard to imagine
longer duration = greater potential for ad effectiveness.  Whether that is
true or not remains to be seen, but it makes sense, especially since "time"
is used in the measurement of other electronic media - it's a standard.
That doesn't mean I'm endorsing "duration" as an engagement metric for your
business, it just means duration is appropriate for the display ad model.

If someone who is involved is more valuable than someone who is not
involved, there are a lot of good reasons to measure engagement, the primary
one being Management cares more about the future than they do about the
past, because they can "do something" about the future.   As an analyst, if
you start reporting on the future - predicting - as opposed to reporting on
the past, people are really going to pay attention.

Predicting the value of Content, Widgets, Products, Campaigns - that is a
capability Management will be quite interested in, I think.  Because they
can "do something" based on those predictions.

So, for example, using the other time metric, "time since", you can measure
these areas for engagement value:

1.  Content Areas
2.  Widgets
3.  Products
4.  Campaigns

Which content areas, widgets, products, campaigns create visitors /
customers who remain engaged?  Which do not?

Then within each area, rank the different assets according to which ones
produce the most engagement.  And the reason you want to do this?  Because
engagement represents the creation of future value to the company, and this
value can be measured over time just like the value of any other asset.  You
want to increase investment in areas that create involvement, and decrease
investment in areas that do not.

The content producing the highest engagement should get the highest
investment, the campaign producing highest engagement should get highest
investment, and so forth.  It's prediction of ROI, as opposed to backward
measurement of ROI.  And as the future plays out, you can measure the
accuracy of your prediction and optimize.  It's really no different than all
the other "optimization" work people analyze every day.

Here is an example using social media.  Say you have a bookmarking site and
the number of accounts and total bookmarks and so forth is rising (volume),
but the percentage of dormant accounts (say, no activity for 2 months) is
rising more rapidly.  At some point, the dormancy issue overpowers the
volume issue and the site starts to spiral downward in volume.  You can
predict this downward spiral will happen by looking at the "time since"
metric and try to take action before it's too late.

Most people look at volume as a measure of popularity and growth and by the
time volume starts dropping, it is already too late to save the site.  The
audience *has already* dis-engaged.  The engagement drops off before the
traffic volume does, and that is why enagagement is predictive and directly
addresses future value.

I'm sure you can all think of various start-up sites where this is happening
right now based on what friends are saying and general buzz on the boards,
and you think to yourself "they're not going to be around in 2 years".

You made a prediction.  You didn't need any fancy metrics, just a sense of
engagement.  If you asked these friends "how long it has been" since they
interacted with these sites, they would probably say "a while".

If we want engagement to be a measure that has value and is actionable,
there has to be a time element.  Otherwise, it's just counting events that
take place, and we already collect a ton of that information.

If we want to create something valuable out of engagement, it can't be just
a more complex version of what we already have - visitor did this, did
that - it has to address a new dimension of the behavior - how engaged are
they in the action, how likely are they to do it again?

Jim Novo
jim@...
Web Site: http://www.jimnovo.com
Blog: http://blog.jimnovo.com/



--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, Jim Sterne <jsterne@...> wrote:
>
> At 08:09 AM 7/11/2007, jchasin@... wrote:
> >-- I'm wondering what folks here think engagement actually is/means?
> >How do you define the concept of
> >engagement...
>
> While I wouldn't go all the way to "poppycock" I do
> spout off about Engagement in this podcast:
> http://tinyurl.com/yv7zwy
>
> >The ARF definition of engagement is, "Turning on a prospect to a brand
> >idea." I haven't bought into that one quite yet.
>
> ANA, AAAA, ARF
>          Engagement is turning on a prospect to a
>          brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context
>
> Jeremiah Owyang
>          Engagement indicates the level of authentic involvement,
> intensity, contribution, and ownership
>
> Eric Peterson
>          Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth
>          of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly
>          defined set of goals
>
>
>    ------------------------------------------------------
> eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
> Washington D.C., Oct 14-17
> http://www.emetrics.org
> San Francisco - London - Dusseldorf - Stockholm
>
> WAA Base Camp
> http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/
> July - August 2007
> Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
>
> Gurus of Marketing Optimization
> http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/
> July - August 2007
> Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>    Jim Sterne <jsterne@...>
>    http://www.targeting.com +1-805-965-3184
>    Chairman, http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

How can we get a survey to come up for any exit (that is not an exit
from the success page) without using an onload event? I want to be
able to ask visitors about their experience, but onload triggers popup
blockers. We could use a link, click here to take our survey, but that
probably won't be that successful. The event that I want to trigger
the survey is an exit...

Robbin

Hi Guys! Anybody knows how to track page reloads on google analytics?
Is It ok to track when "next page" equals "current page" as a reload?
Thanks in advance for your help.
regards

Hi All,

I work for a large nonprofit humanitarian organization, and we run a
large number of banners online (various networks, heavy saturation
relative to our competitors).  We've noticed that when our banner
volume increases, our search volume (both impressions and conversions)
increases as well, as does our unsourced homepage donor acquisition.

Has anyone seen any generalized methods for calculating the impact of
one online advertising channel on another? Are there any white papers
on the subject? What have you done in the past to study this phenomenon?

Thanks in advance.

Jim,

Incredible post--I think am going to become a very frequent reader of your blog
as soon as I press the send button.

However, it might be useful to point out that the big agencies are major
NetRatings and ComScore clients and many of their online buyers at least up
until fairly recently came from a TV background or were right out of college.
This meant that they did not understand--or at least could not convey to their
clients--the concepts you outline below with respect to the fragmentation of
display ads across a given site. They instead considered a website buy in the
same way in which they evaluated a cable television channel buy: with reach and
frequency metrics.

In other words, they were applying the broadcast ad model to the web, which as
anyone on this list knows, doesn't make very much sense. I don't know how much
this has changed, but if the broadcast upfronts are any indicator, they haven't
very much.

For an ad-supported site, engagement (as defined by time spent, page views per
visitor, visits/visitor, or whatever you fancy) only means what the ad
agencies--representing brand advertisers--think it should mean, except to the
extent that it can serve, albeit rather tenuously, as a measure of quality of
exposure to the brand as opposed to quantity as you write below.

As we probably all agree, "engagement" for ad-supported websites needs to be
defined and established in a way that is directly tied to the goals of the
client. While as a couple of other posters point out, it's unlikely that a "one
size fits all" approach would be appropriate, IMO the real problem is getting
the big players on both the agency and the client side to fundamentally
understand the medium.

David


-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Jim Novo" <jim@...>
> This reminds me. With all the attendant fuss about "engagement"--
> apparently directly tracable to a speech by Jim Stengel (P&G) at the
> 4As 3 years ago where he predicted "In 20 years we'll be posting (doing
> TV post-buy analysis) on engagement."-- I'm wondering what folks here
> think engagement actually is/means? How do you define the concept of
> engagement...

Let's not forget that Nielsen / comScore have business models that are
pretty rare, and if their customers put enough pressure on them to provide a
metric they are going to do it. This has happened before - see cable TV:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/06/12/media-measurement/#behave

The broad reason this is happening is a lot more important than the metric
itself, we're talking about increasing the accountability of display
advertising here. Personally, I think the agency / publishing complex is
seeing a breakdown in the value of display advertising, with clients pushing
back on the value of the spend, see:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/06/08/banners-brand/

So this action by Nielsen / comScore may be about trying some new metrics to
base display buys on, in the hope that the media will then become more
effective. Don't forget the success criteria for display media is different
from what many of us deal with, correct? They're not looking for "action",
they are looking for "exposure". Time spent works for this.

In fact, exposure or time spent is a more "normal" measurement stick for
media; print being the big exception. So another part of this is (I think)
is saying that web display advertising is less like print, more like radio /
TV, which I happen to agree with. You could argue that Cume Quarter Hours
(from radio) is a much better metric to measure what they are trying to
measure than time on site, for example. Think about the attention span for
terrestrial radio and the behavior that goes with it and you could argue web
behavior - as far as display ads go - is much the same. Cume Quarter Hours
is in fact an "engagement metric" but on a gross (not individual) scale -
the "rolling average" of listeners during a 15 minute period.

Makes sense to me for radio, makes sense to me for any medium where
attention / engagement tends to be fragmented and the audience is "roiling".
Just like when we tried to convince Nielsen that Cume Quarter Hours were a
better measurement for HSN's TV audience (see 1st link above). And none of
this changes web analytics in terms of visitor behavior; we're talking
exposure here - awareness / intent - not behavior.

So, with that backdrop, to get to the engagement question, what you have to
ask yourself first is this: what is it you are measuring when you are
measuring engagement - **no matter what metric you are using**?

I would argue engagement represents Future Value or Potential Value - the
likelihood of further value creation by a visitor / customer. It's a
generic prediction of sorts - the more "engaged" someone is, the more likely
they are to pay attention to an ad (in the Nielsen case), visit again,
purchase again, complete the B2B sales process, whatever value creation
exists for the site. In the case of display advertising / Time on Site,
this certainly makes sense, given how quickly a visit can take place. How
can you even see an ad if you are there for 3 seconds?

If you start with engagement = potential value to advertiser / site in the
future, then you start down a very important new path, one I think simply
reflects the maturation of the medium. It's a move from a quantity based
metric to a quality based metric, which is common in media buying. In fact,
it's pretty much the underlying story of the "Behavioral Targeting" folks in
display advertising, right?

Even though I would (personally) argue Behavioral Targeting does not target
"behavior" as such, they are targeting "engagement with a topic", and this
results in better yield for the display space on all sides - publisher and
advertiser. If they could, I'm sure publishers would turn all their
inventory into behaviorally targeted space, since it seems to always be sold
out at a premium. And that's because visitors who are "engaged with a
topic" have higher value than those who are not - a value in the future,
which **converts to a value in the present** when an action is taken.

In other words, the further down the "funnel" you are, the more "engaged"
you are, and the higher your potential value. You could argue visitors who
are searching for something specific are even further down the funnel, are
more engaged, and have even higher potential value.

Engaged = potential or future value = more likely to create value in the
future

That said, if you believe this fundamental engagement = future value model
to be true, you must choose a metric to measure it that comes the closest to
representing a "store of value" in the visitor / customer. For Nielsen,
that is probably Time on Site - at least until they can get new technology
running or there is pressure from clients to come up with something better.

As a measure of media power or "weight", I still think Cum Quarters would be
even better than time on site - remember, these display buyers don't really
care about individuals, they care about the "force" they can exert against a
target - similar to GRP's offline. A rolling average like Cum Quarter hours
seems more likely to provide that idea - and it is daypartable, which
perhaps is why they don't want to go there...

So, what does "engagement" mean to you - not a specific metric, but as a
concept? Why should you care about it, where is the value creation you get
by measuring it?

Jim Novo
jim@...
Web Site: http://www.jimnovo.com
Blog: http://blog.jimnovo.com/




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I noticed in Omniture's Knowledge Base a list of plugins (ID 1411),
among which is one called getTimeToComplete. I like the idea of building
my own engagement metrics around specific processes and funnels that
we've got on our site. So while generic Time Spent on Site metrics are
useless for us, I can see  value in benchmarking the Time Spent between
Package Selection and Purchase.





________________________________

From: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com [mailto:webanalytics@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Jim Sterne
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:41 PM
To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com; webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [webanalytics] Re: Nielsen NetRatings Switch-Off to Time on
Site



At 08:09 AM 7/11/2007, jchasin@... <mailto:jchasin%40nyc.rr.com>
wrote:
>-- I'm wondering what folks here think engagement actually is/means?
>How do you define the concept of
>engagement...

While I wouldn't go all the way to "poppycock" I do
spout off about Engagement in this podcast:
http://tinyurl.com/yv7zwy <http://tinyurl.com/yv7zwy>

>The ARF definition of engagement is, "Turning on a prospect to a brand
>idea." I haven't bought into that one quite yet.

ANA, AAAA, ARF
Engagement is turning on a prospect to a
brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context

Jeremiah Owyang
Engagement indicates the level of authentic involvement,
intensity, contribution, and ownership

Eric Peterson
Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth
of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly
defined set of goals

------------------------------------------------------
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
Washington D.C., Oct 14-17
http://www.emetrics.org <http://www.emetrics.org>
San Francisco - London - Dusseldorf - Stockholm

WAA Base Camp
http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/
<http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/>
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC

Gurus of Marketing Optimization
http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/ <http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/>
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
----------------------------------------------------------
Jim Sterne <jsterne@... <mailto:jsterne%40targeting.com> >
http://www.targeting.com <http://www.targeting.com>  +1-805-965-3184
Chairman, http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
<http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The link isn't pulling up right now.  Wonder if it is temporarily offline

On 7/12/07, robbinsteif <steif@...> wrote:
>
>   Today I got email asking for the address of the WAA Cafe Press store
> that Daniel Waisberg created, and thought that others might want the
> address again (we'll find a way to put it on the site)
>
> http://www.cafepress.com/waassociation
>
> Also, those of you who got the email newsletter yesterday -
>
> Did you like it? Did you hate it? Did it seem any different from any
> of our other newsletters? If you could wave a magic wand and have the
> newsletter include any kind of content you wanted, what would that
> content be?
>
> Do you feel like the newsletter adds to your WAA membership?
>
> Don't be bashful, you can be as nasty as you like here (if the
> moderators will allow it.) "I loved it" doesn't help much, but "I
> loved it becasue...." and "I really hated this one thing...." are
> incredibly helpful.
>
> Thanks - Robbin
>
>
>



--
Bradley L. Warthan
(812) 457-4479


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Josh,

Why does "measuring audiences to ad supported media" on the *web* need to be
"one or the other?"

Would a Name Media agree? Linden/Second Life? Milliondollarhomepage.com?
Google?

Judah


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Today I got email asking for the address of the WAA Cafe Press store
that Daniel Waisberg created, and thought that others might want the
address again (we'll find a way to put it on the site)

http://www.cafepress.com/waassociation

Also, those of you who got the email newsletter yesterday -

Did you like it? Did you hate it? Did it seem any different from any
of our other newsletters? If you could wave a magic wand and have the
newsletter include any kind of content you wanted, what would that
content be?

Do you feel like the newsletter adds to your WAA membership?

Don't be bashful, you can be as nasty as you like here (if the
moderators will allow it.) "I loved it" doesn't help much, but "I
loved it becasue...." and "I really hated this one thing...." are
incredibly helpful.

Thanks - Robbin

Thanks Jim

I've been able to simplify it down to how it matters to web folks:

Engagement is "Apparent Interest"

While it's been argued that one can be engaged and never measured, I
don't care, as we won't be able to measure!  It's "Apparent" because
they've done something on the site, or paid attention, or interacted
with the site, or even a casual gesture.

--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, Jim Sterne <jsterne@...> wrote:
>
> At 08:09 AM 7/11/2007, jchasin@... wrote:
> >-- I'm wondering what folks here think engagement actually is/means?
> >How do you define the concept of
> >engagement...
>
> While I wouldn't go all the way to "poppycock" I do
> spout off about Engagement in this podcast:
> http://tinyurl.com/yv7zwy
>
> >The ARF definition of engagement is, "Turning on a prospect to a brand
> >idea." I haven't bought into that one quite yet.
>
> ANA, AAAA, ARF
>          Engagement is turning on a prospect to a
>          brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context
>
> Jeremiah Owyang
>          Engagement indicates the level of authentic involvement,
> intensity, contribution, and ownership
>
> Eric Peterson
>          Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth
>          of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly
>          defined set of goals
>
>
>    ------------------------------------------------------
> eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
> Washington D.C., Oct 14-17
> http://www.emetrics.org
> San Francisco - London - Dusseldorf - Stockholm
>
> WAA Base Camp
> http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/
> July - August 2007
> Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
>
> Gurus of Marketing Optimization
> http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/
> July - August 2007
> Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>    Jim Sterne <jsterne@...>
>    http://www.targeting.com +1-805-965-3184
>    Chairman, http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Juan,

Thanks for the clarification on recency. It now seems that I have 85%
1.9M visits in the 0 day segment. At max this could contain about
500K new visitors. So the remaining 1.3M visits must be the last day
of the reporting time period. In this case the 30th of June but we
only had 2.18M in the whole month.

This is weird?

--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "Juan Quesada"
<juanito.quesada@...> wrote:
>
> The standard definition of recency is: recency tells you how many
visitors
> came to your site x days ago, independent whether they are new or
returning
> visitors. So 0 days ago would mean how many came today (again both
new AND
> returning visitors), where today would be the last day you selected
in your
> date range.
> Frequency (=loyalty) tells you how many times have visitors came to
your
> site in TOTAL, so from the day you started measuring their visits
(taking
> into account the cookie deletion of course).
> So if you have a high frequency and high recency, it does not means
that the
> frequency happened all on day 0. It just means that a lot of
visitors visit
> your site frequently, and that most of them are very recent: so
basically
> that your site is doing very well.
>
> I don't know how GA calculates these metrics, and looking at my
small test
> site it tells me that you have to be very carefull in interpreting
the
> reports. I don't understand how recency report is calculated and in
my
> opinion the results, at least for my small test site, are wrong.
>
> The loyalty report in GA seems also to be a little weird, altough I
think
> I've been able to understand how it's calculated: the visitors in
the
> different segments are not unique (what I would expect), instead a
visitor
> can be counted in several segments at the same time. For example:
if in the
> selected date range a NEW visitor visited 3 times, he/she will be
counted
> in 3 different segments '1 visit segment', '2 visits segment'
and '3 visits
> segment',while you would expect to get him counted only in the '3
visits
> segment'. If you get a returning visitor that previously already
been to the
> site 4 times, and now vistited the site 2 times in the selected
date range,
> this visitor gets counted both in the '5 visits segment' and the '6
visits
> segment' which is meaningless to me.
>
> I think the problem lies in the fact that GA uses VISITS and not
UNIQUE
> VISITORS for these reports, which I would expect when using Recency
and
> Frequency.
>
>
>
> On 7/9/07, ju2ltd <jim@...> wrote:
> >
> >   I have been looking at using Google Analytics Recency and
Loyalty
> > reports as way of guaing our engagement. For the month of June the
> > Loyalty report shows about 25% of our visits are from visitors who
> > visit our site only once. There is second group of users who
account
> > (about 40% of visits) who seem to visit the site really frequently
> > (9+ times per month)
> >
> > When you then look at the Recency Report it shows over 80% (over
> > 1,000k) of visits are in the 0 days section of the chart. My
> > understanding is that the 0 days number equals the number of new
> > visitors. If so don't these numbers contradict each?
> >
> > On the other hand can the 0 days number also include users who
have
> > logged in the last 24 hours? If so then the numbers would indicate
> > that a large number of users visited our site numerous times
> > yesterday. This sounds a bit unbelievable.
> >
> > We estimate the ratio of new to return visitors to be in the
region
> > of 28%
> >
> > Basically my question is whats the definition of the 0 days
segment
> > of the recency chart in Google Analytics?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

At 05:20 AM 7/8/2007, Steve wrote:

>(does) the WAA (does) think very seriously at how they can respond to such
>articles and/or concerns?

Respond seriously to this article? No.
Non-serious response would include sending the author a
tin-foil hat. And I am not serious about that, either. But, if it
walks like a conspiracy theory and quacks like a
conspiracy theory...

Respond to the concern? Definitely.
The WAA has created an Ethics Task Force that will create
a Code of Conduct for the Ethical Use of Data.  Membership
will depend on living up to those ethics.

Steve's full post:

>"The Federal Government Sanctioned Spam Trap"
><http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000242>http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000\
242
>
>The author (Tom Adelstein) is focused on the legal ways in which (USA)
>email spam can be abused. And then drifts, somewhat sideways, into
>discussing privacy in general across the Internet.
>
>I've been concerned for some time that something like this article may
>hit the mainstream. Although... this site isn't exactly mainstream
>either. Having said that, I suspect some here may know of one their
>regular writers. A certain Doc Searls. :-)
>
>The part that really raised my eyebrows was the inference of an evil
>linkage between the Web Analytics Association and Spammers. Now I'm
>not a WAA member - I probably should join, but I surely found that a
>stretch too far.
>
>While I have no right to expect to ask anything of the WAA; can I ask
>that the WAA does think very seriously at how they can respond to such
>articles and/or concerns?
>If this degree of article becomes common it could really do nasty
>things to the entire industry and supporting ecosystems. Particularly
>if Governments get dragged into setting law.
>
>Cheers!
>- Steve
>

    ------------------------------------------------------
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
Washington D.C., Oct 14-17
http://www.emetrics.org
San Francisco - London - Dusseldorf - Stockholm

WAA Base Camp
http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC

Gurus of Marketing Optimization
http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
------------------------------------------------------------
    Jim Sterne <jsterne@...>
    http://www.targeting.com +1-805-965-3184
    Chairman, http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Yesterday I noticed the new headline on my Blogger
dashboard "Attention FeedBurner Fans". Simply put, we can now indicate
to Blogger that our default RSS feed is really served by Feedburner,
thus, leading to a more accurate account of the number of subscribers.

The result (for me), is a drastic increase in the reported number of
subscribers.

Again, it highlights how important it is to look at the trends,
patterns and correlations rather than specific numbers. And to be
cautious when comparing numbers even between similar blogs, sites,
companies or industries.

If you are on Blogger and using Feedburner, you might want to check
that out! More info on my blog.

S.Hamel
eBusiness strategist, web analytics practioner & blogger
http://blog.immeria.net

Hi. I can understand why Nielsen has moved to a "time spent on site"
metric, but for our sites it would still need an extra dimension such
as event monitoring to tell us if a browser is spending 5 minutes
reading content on one page or 5 minutes with a number of
clicks/transactions/page views throughout the site.

I'm not sure how you can rank a site by time spent on site.

My view is that rather than use page views which is outdated, we should
focus on "events".
An event would allow us to monitor activity within flash or any ajax
application even if the URL in the browser never changes. We could do
this through measuring clicks, video markers even page views etc...

This would provide us with an overall picture of engagement.

...and all this should relate to our and our customers objectives. But
would this be useful to Nielsen, probably not?

At 08:09 AM 7/11/2007, jchasin@... wrote:
>-- I'm wondering what folks here think engagement actually is/means?
>How do you define the concept of
>engagement...

While I wouldn't go all the way to "poppycock" I do
spout off about Engagement in this podcast:
http://tinyurl.com/yv7zwy

>The ARF definition of engagement is, "Turning on a prospect to a brand
>idea." I haven't bought into that one quite yet.

ANA, AAAA, ARF
          Engagement is turning on a prospect to a
          brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context

Jeremiah Owyang
          Engagement indicates the level of authentic involvement,
intensity, contribution, and ownership

Eric Peterson
          Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth
          of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly
          defined set of goals


    ------------------------------------------------------
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
Washington D.C., Oct 14-17
http://www.emetrics.org
San Francisco - London - Dusseldorf - Stockholm

WAA Base Camp
http://www.emetrics.org/waabasecamp/
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC

Gurus of Marketing Optimization
http://www.emetrics.org/gomo/
July - August 2007
Los Angeles - Boston - Chicago - New York - Washington DC
------------------------------------------------------------
    Jim Sterne <jsterne@...>
    http://www.targeting.com +1-805-965-3184
    Chairman, http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello Judah,

I just currently read the  article you did with Marketing Sherpa discussing the
challenges of Web 2.0 application and what features get the best ROI. My company
still hasn't moved entirely on the ever so moving train, but this article is a
great references of tracking one's campaigns.

Link below if anyone else was interested:

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30038


Judah Phillips <judahphillips@...> 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.

  That said, a rich media "event" has a time-basis that should and can be
  measured using current technology.

  Of course, even if we don't agree or have serious concerns about
  applicability or relevancy of this metric as an overall barometer for
  "engagement," I do applaud Neilsen for using their brand to highlight new
  media/Web 2.0 measurement issues.

  [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






---------------------------------
Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on,
when.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Tribune Interactive is looking for a SEM Research Manager to work on
our newspaper sites, and our new entertainment product
www.metromix.com which is rolling out in LA and NY.

Please let me know if you are interested by contacting me at
tomtribune@...

Thanks,

Tom


Search Engine Marketing Research Manager

Tribune Interactive (TI), a division of Tribune Company is a national
leader in interactive marketing. TI reaches over 15 million consumers
each month, and serves many of the nation's leading advertisers
through the Web sites of major daily newspapers such as the Los
Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday, and via relationships with
strategic partners such as CareerBuilder, Cars.com and ShopLocal.

TI is currently recruiting for a Search Engine Marketing Research
Manager, specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) and
paid search.  In this newly created position you will help identify
paid search opportunities for TI, support the development of SEO
strategies and tactics to grow TI network traffic, and analyze data to
show how much the SEO and paid search work is benefiting TI.

As SEM research manager, you will be responsible for efforts to
promote our full network of sites using search marketing strategies
and techniques.  This person will be accountable for keyword research
and paid search.


The successful candidate will:
* Conduct consumer and market research to identify SEO and paid search
opportunities for TI
* Provide keyword recommendations to strategic planning and product
development
* Track and report on SEO activities and business results
* Work closely with search engine optimization manager
* Identify and recommend changes in strategy and tactics as indicated
by metrics
* Create and implement external link-building strategies that drive
more traffic to our sites
* Develop and execute traffic-building social network ideas and plans
* Collaborate with local markets and TI departments to ensure industry
best practices and recommendations are being acted upon
* Train local market personnel on search engine research and paid
search best practices
* Develop keyword buying and other paid search strategies to
complement organic SEO
* Formulate and implement bidding strategies to meet ROI goals and
then implement those strategies
* Analyze, optimize and compile recommendations to improve paid search
campaigns
* Direct the creation of ad copy for use in copy testing
* Contribute to other Strategic Marketing department initiatives as
required


Requirements
* 4-year college degree
* Proven paid search for at least 3 years with minimum 4+ years
overall online marketing experience.  SEO experience in an online
publishing company preferred.
* Must be detail oriented with excellent analytical and problem
solving skills
* In depth knowledge of and interest in SEO, SEM and online media; up
to date with latest industry trends, technology and changes
* Strong desire to work in SEO and paid search industry
* Must have experience working on SEO of multi-media content including
video, images, mp3s, etc.
* Experience with Web Analytics software (Omniture, WebTrends, etc.)
and third party research tools such as comScore and Nielsen NetRatings
* This is a marketing position and not a technical position.  However,
some knowledge of web design and construction is necessary to the
degree required for SEO.

I agree with John and Neil that time metrics, like any metric, are
mainly important when given meaning and they have little meaning
until you correlate them to success, failure, or something actionable.

As an advertiser, if my boss went nuts and required me to use a
site's Time per Visit or Time per Page to determine my spend without
a correlation between those and conversion, my gut instict would be
be to shy away from both long and short times.  Short because it
might indicate high bounces or just because viewers might not have
time to perceive my ads.

I'd stay away from very long times for an even larger variety of
reasons. A high per page time means that, unless my ad floats, the
viewer has spent most of the time /not/ perceiving my ad. A high on
site time might indicate the site is /too/ engaging or sticky, say a
game, so the viewer is unlikely to notice or click ads. Or that the
site is the kind you leave open in a tab in the background all day,
like gmail.

Either way, Neilsen(or someone) will need to show both that time
correlates to "value" and that it does so better than the pageview or
the visit.

--
Brian Monaghan

> This reminds me.  With all the attendant fuss about "engagement"--
> apparently directly tracable to a speech by Jim Stengel (P&G) at the
> 4As 3 years ago where he predicted "In 20 years we'll be posting (doing
> TV post-buy analysis) on engagement."-- I'm wondering what folks here
> think engagement actually is/means?  How do you define the concept of
> engagement...

Let's not forget that Nielsen / comScore have business models that are
pretty rare, and if their customers put enough pressure on them to provide a
metric they are going to do it.  This has happened before - see cable TV:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/06/12/media-measurement/#behave

The broad reason this is happening is a lot more important than the metric
itself, we're talking about increasing the accountability of display
advertising here.  Personally, I think the agency / publishing complex is
seeing a breakdown in the value of display advertising, with clients pushing
back on the value of the spend, see:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/2007/06/08/banners-brand/

So this action by Nielsen / comScore may be about trying some new metrics to
base display buys on, in the hope that the media will then become more
effective.  Don't forget the success criteria for display media is different
from what many of us deal with, correct?  They're not looking for "action",
they are looking for "exposure".  Time spent works for this.

In fact, exposure or time spent is a more "normal" measurement stick for
media; print being the big exception.  So another part of this is (I think)
is saying that web display advertising is less like print, more like radio /
TV, which I happen to agree with.  You could argue that Cume Quarter Hours
(from radio) is a much better metric to measure what they are trying to
measure than time on site, for example.  Think about the attention span for
terrestrial radio and the behavior that goes with it and you could argue web
behavior - as far as display ads go - is much the same.  Cume Quarter Hours
is in fact an "engagement metric" but on a gross (not individual) scale -
the "rolling average" of listeners during a 15 minute period.

Makes sense to me for radio, makes sense to me for any medium where
attention / engagement tends to be fragmented and the audience is "roiling".
Just like when we tried to convince Nielsen that Cume Quarter Hours were a
better measurement for HSN's TV audience (see 1st link above).  And none of
this changes web analytics in terms of visitor behavior; we're talking
exposure here - awareness / intent - not behavior.

So, with that backdrop, to get to the engagement question, what you have to
ask yourself first is this: what is it you are measuring when you are
measuring engagement - **no matter what metric you are using**?

I would argue engagement represents Future Value or Potential Value - the
likelihood of further value creation by a visitor / customer.  It's a
generic prediction of sorts - the more "engaged" someone is, the more likely
they are to pay attention to an ad (in the Nielsen case), visit again,
purchase again, complete the B2B sales process, whatever value creation
exists for the site.  In the case of display advertising / Time on Site,
this certainly makes sense, given how quickly a visit can take place.  How
can you even see an ad if you are there for 3 seconds?

If you start with engagement = potential value to advertiser / site in the
future, then you start down a very important new path, one I think simply
reflects the maturation of the medium. It's a move from a quantity based
metric to a quality based metric, which is common in media buying.  In fact,
it's pretty much the underlying story of the "Behavioral Targeting" folks in
display advertising, right?

Even though I would (personally) argue Behavioral Targeting does not target
"behavior" as such, they are targeting "engagement with a topic", and this
results in better yield for the display space on all sides - publisher and
advertiser.  If they could, I'm sure publishers would turn all their
inventory into behaviorally targeted space, since it seems to always be sold
out at a premium.  And that's because visitors who are "engaged with a
topic" have higher value than those who are not - a value in the future,
which **converts to a value in the present** when an action is taken.

In other words, the further down the "funnel" you are, the more "engaged"
you are, and the higher your potential value.  You could argue visitors who
are searching for something specific are even further down the funnel, are
more engaged, and have even higher potential value.

Engaged = potential or future value = more likely to create value in the
future

That said, if you believe this fundamental engagement = future value model
to be true, you must choose a metric to measure it that comes the closest to
representing a "store of value" in the visitor / customer.  For Nielsen,
that is probably Time on Site - at least until they can get new technology
running or there is pressure from clients to come up with something better.

As a measure of media power or "weight", I still think Cum Quarters would be
even better than time on site - remember, these display buyers don't really
care about individuals, they care about the "force" they can exert against a
target - similar to GRP's offline.  A rolling average like Cum Quarter hours
seems more likely to provide that idea - and it is daypartable, which
perhaps is why they don't want to go there...

So, what does "engagement" mean to you - not a specific metric, but as a
concept?  Why should  you care about it, where is the value creation you get
by measuring it?

Jim Novo
jim@...
Web Site: http://www.jimnovo.com
Blog: http://blog.jimnovo.com/

IMHO, Time-based metrics will eventually become relevant only to some sites
and irrelevant to other sites. From what I have read and heard, various
industry experts are looking for the holy grail of metrics, the end-all
say-all to how to measure a website's success or failure. My prediction is
that the answer lies in a buffet of metrics, you pick and choose the metrics
to what fits your site.

In the long term, industry-standard metrics may become segmented. Each type
of site will use their own set of metrics for what is  appropriate to the
site. You Tube would like long visits while a commerce site would like high
conversions. Therefore, You Tube would use time-based metrics while a
commerce site would use funnels and conversion rates. How long the Visitor
stays on the site may be irrelevant as long as the sale is made. If this
ideology becomes true, then companies are chasing their tails with trying to
come up with an industry yardstick.

To continue with this idea,  the segmented metric may not even be based on
type of site (i.e., content vs. commerce) it may be segmented on how the
site is constructed (i.e., ajax, plain-vanilla HTML, portal, etc.). And
therefore, the analytics used on a particular site is the type of metric
that can actually be collected from the site.

What becomes really wild, is if website developers actually develop a site
based on what kind of metrics need to be collected. Think about the
implications for that side of the house!


On 7/10/07, enriquejgonzales <enrique.gonzales@...> wrote:
>
>   http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1497013742;fp;16;fpid;0
>
> --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com <webanalytics%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "enriquejgonzales"
> <enrique.gonzales@...> wrote:
> >
> > Nielsen scraps Web page view rankings
> > <a
> >
> href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070709/ap_on_hi_te/online_measurements
> ">NEW
> > YORK - A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based
> > on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking
> > how long visitors spend at the sites.
> > ADVERTISEMENT
> >
> > The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, expected to be announced Tuesday,
> > comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page
> > views less meaningful.</a>
> >
> > http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070709/ap_on_hi_te/online_measurements
> >
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Robbin and Justin,

Thanks again for all of your help. We'll moving forward with
implementing the code as you both have recommended. I'll keep everyone
posted  probably in 1-2 weeks.

Thanks!

Daniel

-- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "robbinsteif" <steif@...> wrote:
>
> Daniel - the constructor format does not matter much. If you write it
> /$A1$B1, then your domain/subdomain reporting will come out like this:
>
> /www.yoursite.com/folder
>
> and if you write it like this
>
> $A1$B1
>
> it will come out
>
> www.yoursite.com/folder, i.e. no leading slash.
>
> and for that matter, if it works for you, you can write it
>
> $A1+$B1
>
> and then it will come out
>
> www.yoursite.com+/folder
>
> So when you choose a constructor, remember that it is plain text, and
> you can format it in any way that works best for you. In this case,
> $A1$B1 seems to be the best, only because it LOOKS nice.
>
> Robbin
>
> --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "driveong" <driveong@> wrote:
> >
> > Justin,
> >
> > Thanks so much for your reply. I've never heard of the utmHash
> > variable. I've got lots to learn. ;)
> >
> > Also, for reporting I assume I should be using the sub-domain filter
> > as given in Google Analytics help:
> >
> > Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced
> > Field A: Hostname
> > Extract A: (.*)
> > Field B: Request URI
> > Extract B: (.*)
> > Output To: Request URI
> > Constructor: /$A1$B1
> >
> > I noticed that the filter for multi-domain has on difference from the
> > above, using "Constructor: $A1$B1" instead of "Constructor: /$A1$B1".
> >
> > Thanks Again,
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "Justin Cutroni" <justin@>
> >
> >
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Daniel,
> > >
> > > You need to do a couple of things to get tracking to work.
> > >
> > > First, you absolutely need to use utmLiner().  The reason is that
> > > utmLinker() is the actual mechanism that transfers the cookies from
> > > one domain to the other.  Without utmLinker() you'd have two sets of
> > > cookies with DIFFERENT values.  You want two sets of cookies
with the
> > > SAME values.
> > >
> > > Remember, you may want utmLinker() on WidgetCorp.com pages as well.
> > > The reason is that the pages on WidgetCorp.com could be search
engine
> > > results pages and some visitors might navigate from
WidgetCorp.com to
> > > ProductA.com.
> > >
> > > The second thing you need to do is add another variable to the
> > > tracking code.  This variable is named _uhash and should be set to
> > > "off".  This variable adds a hashed (or encoded) version of the
domain
> > > name to the tracking cookies.  This value is used during
processing by
> > > the GA system.
> > >
> > > On ProductA.com:
> > > _udn="none"
> > > _uhash="off"
> > > _ulink=1;
> > >
> > > On Store.WidgetCorp.com:
> > > _UDN="WidgetCorp.com"
> > > _uhash="off"
> > > _ulink=1
> > >
> > > One WidgetCorp.com:
> > > _UDN="WidgetCorp.com"
> > > _uhash="off"
> > > _ulink=1
> > >
> > > That should do it.
> > >
> > > Justin
> > >
> > > http://epikone.com/blog
> > >
> > > --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "driveong" <driveong@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > A. Situation
> > > > I've helped set-up plenty of GA accounts, but this is the first
> time I
> > > > have the following tricky situation (for use in 1 profile):
> > > >
> > > > 1. www.ProductA.com: product website
> > > > 2. store.WidgetCorp.com: The store where one can buy ProductA
> > > > 3. www.WidgetCorp.com: company website
> > > >
> > > > Currently, there is a link from ProductA.com to
Store.WidgetCorp.com
> > > > to buy the product.
> > > >
> > > > B. Possible Solution?
> > > > Google has instructions on multi-domain tracking, and sub-domain
> > > > tracking - but nothing on how to track both!
> > > >
> > > > But based on what I've read/done, I'm assuming the following:
> > > >
> > > > On ProductA.com:
> > > > _UDN="none"
> > > >
> > > > On Store.WidgetCorp.com:
> > > > _UDN="WidgetCorp.com"
> > > >
> > > > One WidgetCorp.com:
> > > > _UDN="none"
> > > >
> > > > But, do I need to use "_utmLinker" for the link from
ProductA.com to
> > > > Store.WidgetCorp.com? Like so:
> > > >
> > > > document.write('<a
> > > > href="javascript:__utmLinker(\'https://store.WidgetCorp.com
> > > > \');">Purchase
> > > > Now</a>');
> > > >
> > > > Any pointers, recommendations and thoughts greatly appreciated!
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Daniel
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

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.

That said, a rich media "event" has a time-basis that should and can be
measured using current technology.

Of course, even if we don't agree or have serious concerns about
applicability or relevancy of this metric as an overall barometer for
"engagement," I do applaud Neilsen for using their brand to highlight new
media/Web 2.0 measurement issues.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sr. Web Development Manager- 63438

This position can be based in either San Diego, CA or Plano, TX



If you're interested in the challenge of transforming a Fortune 500
company's consumer-target web site and delivering great customer
experiences, then Intuit is the place to do it because:

- Creating a great web experience for our customers is our #1 priority
and we're willing to invest both people and dollars behind our current
initiatives to deliver on that goal.

- Intuit is looking for forward-thinking, change-oriented web leaders to
help us overhaul our web properties.

- We want awesome talent who can help us leapfrog from our current,
outdated state to the cutting edge future. We don't just want to meet
today's best in class standards...we want to define what best in class
means for the future.



For 20 years, Intuit has revolutionized the way people run their
businesses and manage their financial lives. We now enjoy our position
as the leading provider of business and financial management solutions
for small businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Our
flagship products including Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, all hold
shares of sales ranging between 70% and 85%. But the revolution is far
from over. We are looking for top candidates who can further help us
with our goal of creating new ways to manage finances and small
businesses that are so profound and simple that our customers cannot
imagine going back to their old ways.



Primary Responsibilities:

Lead web marketing team to deliver effective web site content,
functionality and tools to improve the prospect Shop and Buy experience
for ProSeries.com and Lacertesoftware.com.

Develop web site marketing requirements working with customer segment
leaders and other channel marketers. Collaborate with ProTax web
community experts to define information architecture, user interaction
design, visual design, usability standards and technical requirements to
achieve marketing objectives.

Manage team to produce web content and tools using HTML and ATG as a
content management system for dynamic delivery. Manage team to ensure
consistent brand integrity and web style guidelines.

Collaborate with analytics leader to monitor site metrics and analyze
weekly with recommendations to improve awareness and site conversion.
Collaborate with metrics team to provide reporting, analysis and
recommendations to internal business partners as needed.

Collaborate with content, design and usability experts to conduct
benchmark tests and report results and recommendations to customer
segment marketing teams.

Provide professional development for web production managers to create a
high performing team; collaborate with other web operations leaders to
evolve the larger organization. Collaborate with other Intuit web teams
for career pathing and calibration.

Lead production managers to ideate, collect, prioritize, execute and
measure test concept to improve conversion and/or customer satisfaction
with the web sites.

Monitor ProSeries.com and Lacertespftware.com home page content refresh
schedules to promote product/service/customer content and tools; help
customer segment teams develop appropriate new tools for increasing
conversion.

Collaborate with other online marketing colleagues, particularly direct
response, pay per click and search engine optimization experts.

Educate stakeholders on how to leverage web technologies to achieve
better results acquiring and retaining customers



Qualifications:

Significant experience in managing web developers. Preferably in a
B-to-B setting.

Strong understanding of web technologies; Interwoven, Team Site, ATG or
other content management system preferred.

Ability to work effectively across multiple divisions and communication
methods; with multiple levels of internal stakeholders - all the while
remembering that your sites are used by prospects and customers!

Solid understanding of information architecture, usability and web
marketing metrics.

A clear track record of leading dramatic growth in the web channel for a
company selling technology-related products directly to consumers and/or
small businesses.

Business success at companies known for building great and profitable
relationships directly with customers, such as financial services,
business services/products or direct marketing firms.

Ability to develop a strategy and frame the communication for action to
drive a team and cross-functional support.

B.S. /B.A. degree in an appropriate technology or business-related
field. MBA preferred.



bout Intuit:

Founded in 1983, Intuit has over 8,000 employees in 13 states, Canada
and the UK, 25 million customers and over $2 billion in revenue. We're
far too modest to talk about all our accomplishments However, that
hasn't prevented others from doing so.)

* *Intuit took the top spot this year in Fortune magazine's 23rd
annual "America's Most Admired Companies," ranking first in computer
software companies.
* Fortune Magazine recognizes Inuit as #33 of the "100 Best
Companies to Work For."
* Inc. Magazine features Founder Scott Cook as one of the "25
Entrepreneurs We Love - because he learns, and teaches."
* Universum Communications named Intuit one of the Top 200 "Ideal
MBA Employers"
* AMA career feature-Intuit VP of Marketing Q&A via
http://www.marketingpower.com/content114823.php

For consideration, please do not e-mail resume, but apply on-line via

www.intuit.apply2jobs.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=634
38





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I would argue that advertising-- all of it-- exists in either time or
space.  Print has a spatial construct, broadcast a temporal one.
Advertising media pretty much have to be based on the atom of space or
the atom of time (newspaper advertisers buy a half a page of space; TV
advertisers buy thirty seconds of time.)  Measuring audiences to ad-
supported media (a different field from WA, but with overlap) needs to
be based on one or the other, and I would argue that ultimately time is
a better construct than space for Internet audience measurement.

----- Original Message -----
From: John Lovett <jlovett@...>
Date: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:34 am
Subject: [webanalytics] Re: Nielsen NetRatings Switch-Off to Time on
Site
To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com

> I'll echo Neil's statement, that metrics are only valuable if they
> meet business goals or industry needs.
>
> The shift from page views to time spent per site does provide a valid
> solution for measuring RIAs in an attempt towards equalizing
> measurement practices. Yet, the value is somewhat diminished for sites
> that seek to provide a rapid web experience. Time spent may be a
> valuable measure for media and entertainment sites, yet an online
> retailer who can quickly usher a customer through the site resulting
> in a conversion doesn't necessarily value that metric. This is similar
> to why Google has dropped in the new time spent rankings, because they
> seek to expedite the discovery process.
>
> Companies need to evaluate audience measurement metrics based on the
> goals of their unique online properties and those metrics may not
> always align.
>
> John
>
>
> --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "Neil Mason" <nmason@...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> >
> >
> > It feels like it's almost back to the future on this one...
> >
> >
> >
> > Back in 2002 NetRatings acquired a European based audience
> measurement> company called NetValue. One of the main metrics
> NetValue produced (that
> > the others didn't) was "Total Duration" ie the total amount of
> time that
> > people spent on a website, on the grounds that this was a better
> measure> of user engagement. Their philosophy was that people
> needed to think
> > about online media in the same way as offline media - obviously they
> > were a bit ahead of their time....
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm not a Jim, Eric or Avinash but this is obviously going to
> change the
> > way that people think about the medium. In one way it may help
> us move
> > towards a measurement standard in our industry as the page view has
> > always been a bit of a dodgy metric. There will still be
> reconciliation> problems between audience panels and web analytic
> systems as total
> > duration will still be dependent of the definition of a session
> length> etc etc. At the end of the day when you are looking for
> standards, it's
> > inevitable that you will always be playing to the lowest common
> > denominator and so it's going to be sub-optimal. What's right
> for one
> > industry is unlikely to be right for another.
> >
> >
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> >
> >
> > Neil
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:webanalytics@yahoogroups.com]> On Behalf Of romanojon
> > Sent: 10 July 2007 19:59
> > To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [webanalytics] Nielsen NetRatings Switch-Off to Time on
> Site>
> >
> >
> > Hey everyone,
> >
> > I just read a PDF located at the following address:
> >
> > http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
> > <http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf>
> >
> > From what I gather, it seems that due to the increasing
> pervasiveness> of applications based in AJAX and other media
> driven applications
> > contained within a single page, Nielsen has taken to using the
> primary> metric of Time on Site.
> >
> > Does anyone have any opinions on this or can anyone tell me how this
> > affects them? For us, not having any relationship with NetRatings,
> > and very limited involvement with what people would consider Web
> 2.0,> I have no perspective on the magnitude of this announcement.
> Judah> always preaches 'Context' and I agree with him on that. So,
> having> said that, is this transition slightly premature in that
> it only
> > applies as a major measurement of top sites in addition to their
> > traffic for engagement, or is it something so big that I just can't
> > conceive of it yet?
> >
> > I realize there is virtue and value to measuring the attention
> span of
> > the user. I see it as a margin to shoot for in terms of presenting
> > useful options on the site. In the event that we would add numerous
> > videos or instructional content, I would expect its useful in
> knowing> how long people like their videos to keep feeding them
> things which
> > conform to their expectations. Beyond that, and as for using as
> a key
> > metric on which to base performances, I still see it as
> subordinate.
> >
> > Maybe Jim, Eric or Avinash have some insight on this or can lend
> some> wisdom here?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Daniel W. Shields
> >
> > http://danalytics.blogspot.com <http://danalytics.blogspot.com>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
>
>

Web QA Analyst-63437

This position can be based in either San Diego, CA or Plano, TX



If you're interested in the challenge of transforming a Fortune 500
company's consumer-target web site and delivering great customer
experiences, then Intuit is the place to do it because:

- Creating a great web experience for our customers is our #1 priority
and we're willing to invest both people and dollars behind our current
initiatives to deliver on that goal.

- Intuit is looking for forward-thinking, change-oriented web leaders to
help us overhaul our web properties.

- We want awesome talent who can help us leapfrog from our current,
outdated state to the cutting edge future. We don't just want to meet
today's best in class standards...we want to define what best in class
means for the future.



For 20 years, Intuit has revolutionized the way people run their
businesses and manage their financial lives. We now enjoy our position
as the leading provider of business and financial management solutions
for small businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. Our
flagship products including Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax, all hold
shares of sales ranging between 70% and 85%. But the revolution is far
from over. We are looking for top candidates who can further help us
with our goal of creating new ways to manage finances and small
businesses that are so profound and simple that our customers cannot
imagine going back to their old ways.



Responsible for testing specific features/functionality in code
currently being developed to ensure a high level of quality release over
release. Thoroughly understands the function of the area (end to end)
from the customer perspective.



Ensures that the website functions as specified in the design documents.



Responsible for testing assigned areas and their interaction with
functionality. Enters bugs in the bug tracking system to document errors
found on the site. Follows each task through to resolution. Testing for
each milestone is completed on schedule with a high level of quality.
Influence primarily impacts a specific project. Achieves goals and
expectations on standard assignments with limited instruction.



Qualifications:

-Web testing fundamentals including the concepts of both positive and
negative testing

-Basic understanding of web development and deployment process and web
site standards

-Candidate should have strong experience with ATG Commerce and
preferably Interwoven technologies or equivalent technologies.

-Working knowledge of the web testing processes

-Thoroughly understands the web site from the customer end-to-end point
of view



About Intuit:

Founded in 1983, Intuit has over 8,000 employees in 13 states, Canada
and the UK, 25 million customers and over $2 billion in revenue. We're
far too modest to talk about all our accomplishments However, that
hasn't prevented others from doing so.)

* *Intuit took the top spot this year in Fortune magazine's 23rd
annual "America's Most Admired Companies," ranking first in computer
software companies.
* Fortune Magazine recognizes Inuit as #33 of the "100 Best
Companies to Work For."
* Inc. Magazine features Founder Scott Cook as one of the "25
Entrepreneurs We Love - because he learns, and teaches."
* Universum Communications named Intuit one of the Top 200 "Ideal
MBA Employers"
* AMA career feature-Intuit VP of Marketing Q&A via
http://www.marketingpower.com/content114823.php

For consideration, please do not e-mail resume, but apply on-line via

www.intuit.apply2jobs.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.showJob&RID=634
37



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The time spent metric isn't really new. Nielsen NetRatings (and ComScore) have
been reporting various time spent metrics for years - time spent has always been
a very important metric for media and community sites. If you're competing for
an agency ad buy with a site that attracts the same or greater number of
visitors a month, it's a good way to show that your audience is more engaged and
more valuable that that of your competitors.

As you rightly point out IMO, it's not as useful for an ecommerce site, a search
engine, etc.

My take on this for what it's worth--as both a longtime NetRatings and a
ComScore client--is that this is largely a PR move intented to counter
ComScore's similar announcement earlier this year that it was going to begin to
rank sites by total visits instead of page views for the same reason (i.e. that
the page view is "dead" due to RIAs). I personally think the whole thing is more
than a little overblown, but others might disagree.

David

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "chika_bowow" <chika_bowow@...>
No,

I do not like the time spent on site metric for 2 reasons. 1, it's
hard to get accurate. 2, it's all about value of engagement.

1) Typically time spent on 1 page visits as well as exit pages are
calculated differently amongst analytics solutions. So even if Nielsen
gets this right, it will not correlate with the data in web analytics
solutions.

Also tabbed browsing allows multiple pages (tabs) to be open at the
same time. At work, I have an email and calendar tab open all day and
I switch between them all the time. As more web apps become available,
I see this metric favoring business applications.

Finally if it did favor web applications, speed is of paramount
importance as it relates to productivity. So for an email application,
the faster you can access and read emails, the more work you can
complete. In Nielsen's metrics, shorter time = worse rating, which is
wrong.

2) It's not about amount of engagement, it's the value of that
engagement. Think about offline retailers. A shopper might spend an
hour in that store, but the most valuable time to the retailer are the
5 minutes spent paying for the item. Online we have the same
convention. A visitor might have many pageviews, but it's the invoice
pageview or thank you page that we assign the conversion. The reason
being certain engagements are more valuable than others.

For Nielsen, I feel time on site is an attempt to distinguish
themselves from their competition (comscore, Hitwise, compete...) on
how they rank "leading" sites.

But for the web analyst on this forum, I would argue it's more
important to make sure your site delivers value to your visitor's
needs. As well as measuring the value and impact the site has on the
overall business.

-nick

--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "romanojon" <daniel@...> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> I just read a PDF located at the following address:
>
> http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
>
> From what I gather, it seems that due to the increasing pervasiveness
> of applications based in AJAX and other media driven applications
> contained within a single page, Nielsen has taken to using the primary
> metric of Time on Site.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions on this or can anyone tell me how this
> affects them? For us, not having any relationship with NetRatings,
> and very limited involvement with what people would consider Web 2.0,
> I have no perspective on the magnitude of this announcement. Judah
> always preaches 'Context' and I agree with him on that. So, having
> said that, is this transition slightly premature in that it only
> applies as a major measurement of top sites in addition to their
> traffic for engagement, or is it something so big that I just can't
> conceive of it yet?
>
> I realize there is virtue and value to measuring the attention span of
> the user. I see it as a margin to shoot for in terms of presenting
> useful options on the site. In the event that we would add numerous
> videos or instructional content, I would expect its useful in knowing
> how long people like their videos to keep feeding them things which
> conform to their expectations. Beyond that, and as for using as a key
> metric on which to base performances, I still see it as subordinate.
>
> Maybe Jim, Eric or Avinash have some insight on this or can lend some
> wisdom here?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Daniel W. Shields
>
> http://danalytics.blogspot.com
>




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

----- Original Message -----
From: romanojon <daniel@...>
> I think page views is an OK measure of engagement.  I think bounce
> rate is better, and time on site, should the methods by which Nielsen,
> or anyone arrive at this, be clearly defined, may be great for
> engagement.

This reminds me.  With all the attendant fuss about "engagement"--
apparently directly tracable to a speech by Jim Stengel (P&G) at the
4As 3 years ago where he predicted "In 20 years we'll be posting (doing
TV post-buy analysis) on engagement."-- I'm wondering what folks here
think engagement actually is/means?  How do you define the concept of
engagement...

The ARF definition of engagement is, "Turning on a prospect to a brand
idea."  I haven't bought into that one quite yet.

--josh--

I'll echo Neil's statement, that metrics are only valuable if they
meet business goals or industry needs.

The shift from page views to time spent per site does provide a valid
solution for measuring RIAs in an attempt towards equalizing
measurement practices. Yet, the value is somewhat diminished for sites
that seek to provide a rapid web experience. Time spent may be a
valuable measure for media and entertainment sites, yet an online
retailer who can quickly usher a customer through the site resulting
in a conversion doesn't necessarily value that metric. This is similar
to why Google has dropped in the new time spent rankings, because they
seek to expedite the discovery process.

Companies need to evaluate audience measurement metrics based on the
goals of their unique online properties and those metrics may not
always align.

John


--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "Neil Mason" <nmason@...> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
>
>
> It feels like it's almost back to the future on this one...
>
>
>
> Back in 2002 NetRatings acquired a European based audience measurement
> company called NetValue. One of the main metrics NetValue produced (that
> the others didn't) was "Total Duration" ie the total amount of time that
> people spent on a website, on the grounds that this was a better measure
> of user engagement. Their philosophy was that people needed to think
> about online media in the same way as offline media - obviously they
> were a bit ahead of their time....
>
>
>
> I'm not a Jim, Eric or Avinash but this is obviously going to change the
> way that people think about the medium. In one way it may help us move
> towards a measurement standard in our industry as the page view has
> always been a bit of a dodgy metric. There will still be reconciliation
> problems between audience panels and web analytic systems as total
> duration will still be dependent of the definition of a session length
> etc etc. At the end of the day when you are looking for standards, it's
> inevitable that you will always be playing to the lowest common
> denominator and so it's going to be sub-optimal. What's right for one
> industry is unlikely to be right for another.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> Neil
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com [mailto:webanalytics@yahoogroups.com]
> On Behalf Of romanojon
> Sent: 10 July 2007 19:59
> To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [webanalytics] Nielsen NetRatings Switch-Off to Time on Site
>
>
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> I just read a PDF located at the following address:
>
> http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
> <http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf>
>
> From what I gather, it seems that due to the increasing pervasiveness
> of applications based in AJAX and other media driven applications
> contained within a single page, Nielsen has taken to using the primary
> metric of Time on Site.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions on this or can anyone tell me how this
> affects them? For us, not having any relationship with NetRatings,
> and very limited involvement with what people would consider Web 2.0,
> I have no perspective on the magnitude of this announcement. Judah
> always preaches 'Context' and I agree with him on that. So, having
> said that, is this transition slightly premature in that it only
> applies as a major measurement of top sites in addition to their
> traffic for engagement, or is it something so big that I just can't
> conceive of it yet?
>
> I realize there is virtue and value to measuring the attention span of
> the user. I see it as a margin to shoot for in terms of presenting
> useful options on the site. In the event that we would add numerous
> videos or instructional content, I would expect its useful in knowing
> how long people like their videos to keep feeding them things which
> conform to their expectations. Beyond that, and as for using as a key
> metric on which to base performances, I still see it as subordinate.
>
> Maybe Jim, Eric or Avinash have some insight on this or can lend some
> wisdom here?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Daniel W. Shields
>
> http://danalytics.blogspot.com <http://danalytics.blogspot.com>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

No,

I do not like the time spent on site metric for 2 reasons. 1, it's
hard to get accurate. 2, it's all about value of engagement.

1) Typically time spent on 1 page visits as well as exit pages are
calculated differently amongst analytics solutions. So even if Nielsen
gets this right, it will not correlate with the data in web analytics
solutions.

Also tabbed browsing allows multiple pages (tabs) to be open at the
same time. At work, I have an email and calendar tab open all day and
I switch between them all the time. As more web apps become available,
I see this metric favoring business applications.

Finally if it did favor web applications, speed is of paramount
importance as it relates to productivity. So for an email application,
the faster you can access and read emails, the more work you can
complete. In Nielsen's metrics, shorter time = worse rating, which is
wrong.


2) It's not about amount of engagement, it's the value of that
engagement. Think about offline retailers. A shopper might spend an
hour in that store, but the most valuable time to the retailer are the
5 minutes spent paying for the item. Online we have the same
convention. A visitor might have many pageviews, but it's the invoice
pageview or thank you page that we assign the conversion. The reason
being certain engagements are more valuable than others.

For Nielsen, I feel time on site is an attempt to distinguish
themselves from their competition (comscore, Hitwise, compete...) on
how they rank "leading" sites.

But for the web analyst on this forum, I would argue it's more
important to make sure your site delivers value to your visitor's
needs. As well as measuring the value and impact the site has on the
overall business.

-nick






--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "romanojon" <daniel@...> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> I just read a PDF located at the following address:
>
> http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
>
> From what I gather, it seems that due to the increasing pervasiveness
> of applications based in AJAX and other media driven applications
> contained within a single page, Nielsen has taken to using the primary
> metric of Time on Site.
>
> Does anyone have any opinions on this or can anyone tell me how this
> affects them?  For us, not having any relationship with NetRatings,
> and very limited involvement with what people would consider Web 2.0,
> I have no perspective on the magnitude of this announcement.  Judah
> always preaches 'Context' and I agree with him on that. So, having
> said that, is this transition slightly premature in that it only
> applies as a major measurement of top sites in addition to their
> traffic for engagement, or is it something so big that I just can't
> conceive of it yet?
>
> I realize there is virtue and value to measuring the attention span of
> the user. I see it as a margin to shoot for in terms of presenting
> useful options on the site. In the event that we would add numerous
> videos or instructional content, I would expect its useful in knowing
> how long people like their videos to keep feeding them things which
> conform to their expectations. Beyond that, and as for using as a key
> metric on which to base performances, I still see it as subordinate.
>
> Maybe Jim, Eric or Avinash have some insight on this or can lend some
> wisdom here?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Daniel W. Shields
>
> http://danalytics.blogspot.com
>

I think page views is an OK measure of engagement.  I think bounce
rate is better, and time on site, should the methods by which Nielsen,
or anyone arrive at this, be clearly defined, may be great for
engagement.

In my capacity, I use time on site and path length, as well as page
views, to try to gauge the users potential attention span. This gives
us an idea of how to build strategy to test.  In other words, X
percent of the users who come to page Alpha by keyword string 'Y' see
two pages after that and never convert.  As x is an overwhelming
majority, we should tweak the contents to present these people with
clearer options associated with widgets 1,2,3,and 219 (an upsell).

Like I said in the post, I don't have a problem with the measurement
of 'Time on Site' when it refers to what was described.  It seems
viable to things like MySpace, YouTube, or any other site dominated by
some level of social media.  I just don't see it making any sense to
US to make decisions of engagement based on this.  I'll qualify this
by saying that producing this measurement still seems a little shakier
  than collecting via a tag in a raw tally versus inferring a time of
engagement based on actions or lack thereof.

This, then, is the reason why I possibly fail to see the magnitude and
  prefer the means we have at this point.

By the way, I was not limiting my inquiry to ONLY Avinash/Eric or Jim.
  Anyone who feels they could add to our understanding is welcome to
hit me up both on the board or in a direct email. Thanks for the
responses so far.

Sincerely,

Daniel W. Shields
Web Analyst
CableOrganizer.com

http://danalytics.blogspot.com






--- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "nevertrustab" <patriccc@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I can't really answer your questions, but I would like to ask you a
> question:
>
> I like the idea of using time on site for videos, etc. to find out
> what the optimal attention span of your average website visitor
> could be (or it's range).
>
> "(...)and as for using as a key metric on which to base
> performances, I still see it as subordinate."
>
> Why do you consider page views a better indicator than time spent on
> the site (I assume that's what you mean?)? just curious
>
>
>
> --- In webanalytics@yahoogroups.com, "romanojon" <daniel@> wrote:
> >
> > Hey everyone,
> >
> > I just read a PDF located at the following address:
> >
> > http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
> >
> > From what I gather, it seems that due to the increasing
> pervasiveness
> > of applications based in AJAX and other media driven applications
> > contained within a single page, Nielsen has taken to using the
> primary
> > metric of Time on Site.
> >
> > Does anyone have any opinions on this or can anyone tell me how
> this
> > affects them?  For us, not having any relationship with NetRatings,
> > and very limited involvement with what people would consider Web
> 2.0,
> > I have no perspective on the magnitude of this announcement.  Judah
> > always preaches 'Context' and I agree with him on that. So, having
> > said that, is this transition slightly premature in that it only
> > applies as a major measurement of top sites in addition to their
> > traffic for engagement, or is it something so big that I just can't
> > conceive of it yet?
> >
> > I realize there is virtue and value to measuring the attention
> span of
> > the user. I see it as a margin to shoot for in terms of presenting
> > useful options on the site. In the event that we would add numerous
> > videos or instructional content, I would expect its useful in
> knowing
> > how long people like their videos to keep feeding them things which
> > conform to their expectations. Beyond that, and as for using as a
> key
> > metric on which to base performances, I still see it as
> subordinate.
> >
> > Maybe Jim, Eric or Avinash have some insight on this or can lend
> some
> > wisdom here?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Daniel W. Shields
> >
> > http://danalytics.blogspot.com
> >
>