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Neilsen/NetRatings rocked the online world recently with its announcement that it was no longer going to rank websites based on number of page views, but rather on total time spent by users on individual websites.
This huge shift in methodology reflects the growth of technologies such as AJAX and tools such as widgets that are making it hard to even define page views these days, much less measure them. Though this shift in approach doesn't completely solve measurement problems, it does start a useful conversation about the quality of traffic on websites, putting a new emphasis on audience engagement as opposed to the raw number of visits.
Neilsen has its roots in measuring audience for broadcast media, and NetRatings uses panels and sampling to derive its rankings, so most B2B sites don't hit its radar at all. On a practical level, for most of us, this shift has no short-term significance. What makes it potentially important, however, is if this move by Neilsen/NetRatings prompts a fundamental shift in how advertisers value online advertising. Of course, in the realm of pay-for-performance advertising, the only measurement that matters is click-throughs, making this move much ado about nothing.
Interestingly, the winners in this new view of audience measurement are likely to be B2B sites with deep and useful content, and the losers will be search engines, which by design move their visitors off their sites quickly. As advertisers grow increasingly comfortable with the web as a brand-building vehicle, this could well work to shift the balance of power back towards business information publishers.
As this new approach to site measurement evolves, publishers should also be taking a hard look at their own average visits duration statistics to make sure they are as good as they can be. There are lots of website design tricks that can be utilized to lengthen average visit duration (hopefully without annoying visitors too much), and certain types of content, particularly video and user-generated content, are well- known to have a huge and favorable impact on average visit length. But gimmicks and trendy media formats (unless they really make sense for your content) only get you so far. Quality of an audience is what has gotten lost in the online advertising game, but that is what really delivers ROI at the end of the day.
PS: What's a widget? Find out all about widgets and how they can help grow your information business at InfoCommerce 2007.
Labels: neilsen, netratings, pageview
Penton Media's Aircraft Bluebook-Price Digest, an aircraft values resource for the aviation industry, has launched a new web site and online database. The new online presence offers online information and tools to help users determine the value of business and general aviation aircraft. This content was previously only available in the publication's print and CD-ROM editions.
Users, who include aircraft dealers, bankers, pilots and aircraft owners, can quickly and easily access more than 3,000 model years of identification and value-related data--from avionics and airworthiness directives to conversions and overhauls. Digest is offering annual subscriptions to the new service.
Providing its valued content in an online format is unquestionably a vital move for the Digest--but why did it take so long? Publications available only in print and CD-ROM are certainly a rarity today. As a result, it will likely not take customers long to migrate to this new online offering. While many customers continue to appreciate the value print and CD-ROM products afford, they recognize the ease of use and increased functionality of online databases that house their niche content. Online databases are more service than product and perhaps Penton will attract a new customer base as a result of this launch.
Overall, the new web site and database strengthen Penton's presence in the aviation market as they solidly complement the company's other aviation-related offerings--AC-U-KWIK pre-flight planning publications, The Air Charter Guide air charter flight planning products, Air Transport World magazine, AC-U-KWIK Appraisals (accredited valuation services), SourceAviation.com and SpeedNews. The next logical step for the Digest now is to continually increase the functionality of the online product in line with customer input.
An intriguing, not-so-little company called Marchex was in the news this week, announcing a remarkable feat: the simultaneous launch of 100,000 new web sites. This announcement comes on the heels of a glowing article in the New York Times about another company called NameMedia which owns a stunning 2 million+ websites.
What's going on here? These are just two of the better known players in the so-called "direct navigation" space. There are other, less friendly names for this business of operating generic domain names and even common misspellings of popular domains, and loading them up with ads and paid links.
Apparently, some 5-10% of all Internet users eschew search engines in favor of guessing where their desired content can be found. They "direct navigate" by typing in their best guess at a domain name. It's a strange way to try to access information, but then again, a similar percentage of Internet users go to search engines and search on domain names to help get to the domain name they just entered.
Intriguingly, the search engines have an ambiguous relationship with these firms, on the one hand trying to reduce their search engine result rankings because of the content-free nature of their sites, and on the other hand paying them large amounts of money to run third- party advertising for them. Visitors to these sites have a similarly ambiguous relationship. Many of us curse when we accidentally land on one of these sites, but enough apparently find value and click on some of this paid advertising to make Marchex a $100 million business, and to allow NameMedia to raise over $125 million in venture capital.
What we are seeing in this recent Marchex launch of 100,000 sites is a new "flight to quality" on its part, at least on a relative basis. These new sites contain relevant yellow pages listings, reviews, and other content scraped from the web using sophisticated software. The name of the game is to provide as much useful content as possible with no human editorial intervention. That's because people cost money, and these companies generate their handsome margins by providing the minimum amount of useful information they can get away with at as little a cost as possible.
I have never really known what to make out of companies like these. It's clearly a bottom feeder business model, but it can and does make money. Moreover, it's clearly a case where value is in the eye of the beholder. I get little value from them, but if they help lots of unsophisticated web users get to the destinations they might never have found otherwise, what's the harm? It's only when this type of company tries to game the search engines by representing that their sites contain true destination content that they cross the line.
Perhaps what's most telling of all is even these companies are now feeling the pressure to deliver more value in the form of upgraded content. As these companies find that higher quality content results in more traffic and more click-throughs, they will continue to upgrade content and in the process turn into mainstream online content companies. That won't be good for their margins, but it will again prove that at the end of the day, there is no substitute for quality content. And that's no accident.
Labels: direct navigation, marchex, namemedia
R.R. Bowker this week announced its acquisition of Medialab Solutions. Medialab is best known for its AquaBrowser Library search and discovery platform that is used by more than 60 million library patrons in the U.S. and Europe. The companies expect the combination of their strengths (Bowker's extensive collection of bibliographic data and Medialab's visual faceted search technology) to yield new Bowker products that will bolster the library user experience.
AquaBrowser Library is promoted as the only platform that provides visual faceted search solutions for its library customers. It's a library catalog search tool that integrates with any major library system to open up the library catalog and other information sources.
Essentially, it produces a more enlightening and productive search experience for end users. Using the AquaBrowser Library, library patrons can search by entering words into a traditional search box. Results are listed by relevance, like a traditional search engine. But they are also linked to the actual sources that are within and outside of a user's particular library. AquaLibrary uses associations, context and spelling alternatives to yield search results from a library's card catalog that take a user beyond his or her original search.
Search is huge. And Bowker is very smart to make an acquisition that, in essence, enhances the search capabilities of its valuable bibliographic data. The functionality that Medialab's AquaBrowser Library brings to the table will only make that data even more valuable to libraries and their end users. Since Bowker announced that the deal will lead to the introduction of new products, it's likely the roll-out of these new offerings will begin soon.