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Are Page View Metrics Dying?
December 2, 2006 |
According to Steve Rubel, they are:
The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this.
This is a dirty little secret in the advertising business that no one wants to talk about. Media companies love to promote how many page views their properties get. They’ve used the data to build equity. They will fight it tooth and nail to protect it, perhaps by not embracing interactive technologies as quickly as they should. But that’s not going to stop the revolution from coming.
As the page view platform crumbles, there’s going to be a shake out. Everyone is going to scramble to find a metric that helps them compete for ad dollars. Enjoy the show.
But I don’t buy the whole widget argument. Maybe I am the only one, but I check out desktop widgets, look at them, realize they just look pretty and move on to my browser. Widgets on websites? Great. Look - an analog clock in the sidebar. My Google Reader shared feeds. Great, but I still have to go to the site to get the content if I want to see everything - and hence view a page.
Here is my real beef, though: anything but the page view model runs the risk of intruding on my privacy rights. That’s why I am not interested in Steve Gillmor’s attention/gesture model. It is my attention and I want to keep it that way. If I can be convinced to share data about it, I have to be absolutely convinced that the data completely anonymous and can’t be traced back to me. I don’t see anybody in that space that I would trust with that information.
I much prefer Ryan Stewart’s suggestion that the page view model will be enhanced by taking into account ‘interaction,’ but then how do we define ‘interaction,’ and are the eyeballs of somebody who interacts with a site really more valuable than those of somebody who just reads a blog post?
Maybe the problem really isn’t that the page view model is dead, the problem is that advertising itself is dying - even targeted advertising - as we, the users, get used to it and start to completely ignore it (adblock cleans out 99% of ads for me). I am sure most people who visit this blog don’t even see the ads. Traditional advertising is dead - long live the new forms of marketing we don’t know yet.
Technorati Tags: rubel, attention, marketing, advertising
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A very intestesting post and topic… And one we grapple with at Cruxy. We just released a widget that allows people to purchase digital content through an embedded widget. There are many ways to measure interaction here whether in media streams or actual purchases. Most of the people using the widgets want to proclaim a (public) relationship with the creator of the content they are promoting, so this might appeal to folks looking at the wdiget as a form of expression…. The page view / uniques / session length stuff will be hard to kill though…
Your lack of interest notwithstanding, your comments about GestureBank are inaccurate. Contributions to the open pool are by definition opt in pre and post filterable. Contributors control access to their stream, so no privacy violation is possible except if the contributor mandates it. The only entity you must trust is yourself.
Steve, thanks for the reply.
I understand that I am in control of my data at GestureBank, but can I control what GestureBank does with my attention? If I delete my information, can I be sure it hasn’t been copied somewhere else already?
Also, the reason why I am not that interested in the model: why would I want to share my information? If the only reason is that I am going get more targeted advertising, then I am not interested (at least, based on the impression I have gotten so far).
Unless you specifically release your information in return for some benefit, it remains anonymous and not accessible as an individual stream. Only those who contribute can query against the open pool, and only on an aggregated basis. The results of that query can be copied, but not the individual stream, unless authorized under user control.
As to why share, why de.lic.ious or flikr or any shared commons? Aggregate data can have social networking characteristics that are interesting to some, perhaps not you. As to targeted advertising, that may be a result for some, but there are other fruits: improved discovery of relevant data being the lowest hanging fruit at the moment. That leads to adoption of a gesture-driven economy, where the user is in charge, not the marketer.