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Accurate Ratings Bring Down Giants

Written on
Jul 11, 2007 
Author
Sarah Novotny  |
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Accurate Ratings Bring Down Giants

arrowdown.jpgNielsen/Netratings is changing their view of web sites. Instead of ranking by virtue of page views, they will now be putting sites in order of time spent. This is in an effort to provide increased accuracy in naming leading online properties.

NetView, the firm’s syndicated Internet audience measurement service, was beefed up with both Total Minutes and Total Sessions metrics. The new tools are going to give a more refined depiction of total engagement across sites.

Scott Ross, director of product marketing for NetView stated, “Total Minutes is the best engagement metric in this stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using RA and streaming media, but also of web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications.”

This will shift around some giants who have grown accustomed to their spaces. AOL is currently ranked sixth for page views yet first in time spent, thanks in large part to AIM. However, Google slides down from third place to fifth when the focus changes to time spent.

There is a need for the shift as rich media applications and streaming video players have gained popularity and provide users the opportunity to access content without having to fully reload a page. Hence, page views are becoming less pertinent.

Greg Sterling, analyst at Sterling Intelligence said, “Page views have become a less reliable measurement because of all the Ajax technology being used now. It’s all about best reflecting engagement.”

Yahoo gets shot up the list ahead of its competition Fox Interactive Media. Yahoo is ahead of FIM in page views by less than 10%; however their sites have more than twice the time spent on them.

In a response to the demand for improved accuracy, comScore Media Metrix has launched site “visits” which translates to the number of times a person returns to a site with break timed at a half an hour.

Jeff Lanctot is senior vice president for global media at Avenue A/Razorfish, and is one example of many executives giving the change positive reviews. “The page view was exposed as a flawed metric over the last year and Nielsen clearly listened to customers and tried to get out ahead of things with this new metric. I think what we’ve overlooked is the importance of third-party ad serving, because as you look over time what’s most influential is the rich historical data that digital provides.”

At the end of the day, even though the change has been a welcomed one and is pushing to become the new normative, Lanctot, as well as others see that media buyers will have to become accustomed to various angles of measurements.
Nielsen/Netratings is changing their view of web sites. Instead of ranking by virtue of page views, they will now be putting sites in order of time spent. This is in an effort to provide increased accuracy in naming leading online properties.

NetView, the firm’s syndicated Internet audience measurement service, was beefed up with both Total Minutes and Total Sessions metrics. The new tools are going to give a more refined depiction of total engagement across sites.

Scott Ross, director of product marketing for NetView stated, “Total Minutes is the best engagement metric in this stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using RA and streaming media, but also of web environments that have never been well-served by the page view, such as online gaming and Internet applications.”

This will shift around some giants who have grown accustomed to their spaces. AOL is currently ranked sixth for page views yet first in time spent, thanks in large part to AIM. However, Google slides down from third place to fifth when the focus changes to time spent.

There is a need for the shift as rich media applications and streaming video players have gained popularity and provide users the opportunity to access content without having to fully reload a page. Hence, page views are becoming less pertinent.

Greg Sterling, analyst at Sterling Intelligence said, “Page views have become a less reliable measurement because of all the Ajax technology being used now. It’s all about best reflecting engagement.”

Yahoo gets shot up the list ahead of its competition Fox Interactive Media. Yahoo is ahead of FIM in page views by less than 10%; however their sites have more than twice the time spent on them.

In a response to the demand for improved accuracy, comScore Media Metrix has launched site “visits” which translates to the number of times a person returns to a site with break timed at a half an hour.

Jeff Lanctot is senior vice president for global media at Avenue A/Razorfish, and is one example of many executives giving the change positive reviews. “The page view was exposed as a flawed metric over the last year and Nielsen clearly listened to customers and tried to get out ahead of things with this new metric. I think what we’ve overlooked is the importance of third-party ad serving, because as you look over time what’s most influential is the rich historical data that digital provides.”

At the end of the day, even though the change has been a welcomed one and is pushing to become the new normative, Lanctot, as well as others see that media buyers will have to become accustomed to various angles of measurements.





Reader Comments.

Won’t the time spent on a site be distorted by tab browsers? People may have one page open in one tab and then open a new tab while leaving the old one open. So the time spent on the first page will be totting up even though the user is on another site.

Posted by Keith Kavanagh | 3:46 am on July 12, 2007.

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