From Now On, We’ll Be Known as Nlsn/NtRtings
Looks like vowels won’t be the only accoutrements to be tossed aside in the rise of Web 2.0. The venerable page view is to be abandoned as well. This morning measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings said it will no longer use page views as its primary metric for comparing sites, but will instead rank them by total user time spent onsite.
Why the sudden change? The increasing popularity of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which allows a Web site to refresh content without reloading an entire page, demanded it. “It is not that page views are irrelevant now, but they are a less accurate gauge of total site traffic and engagement,” said Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen/NetRatings. “Total minutes is the most accurate gauge to compare between two sites. If [Web] 1.0 is full-page refreshes for content, Web 2.0 is, ‘How do I minimize page views and deliver content more seamlessly?’ “
Yeah, that or how do I inflate my page views and capitalize on the resulting publicity.
Anyway … one possible result of Nielsen’s adoption of time onsite as its primary metric of audience measurement will be a decline in rank for Google. After all, no one really spends much time on the site. We visit, conduct our search, and then we’re off. That said, the company could probably care less about such things. If Google has taught us anything, it’s that the most meaningful metric for success on the Web is not page views, but profitability.
Comments
TV industry people have long complained of the inaccuracy of ratings Nielsen derives from its tiny samples. Posts like this one http://www.slicksurface.com/bl.....alexa.html question NetRatings specifically.
Let’s keep in mind that Nielsen is only one measurement source, and not necessarily the best one.
Posted by Paul Collins at July 10th, 2007 at 2:27 pmI’m surprised daily on how many media buyers I ask what research their agency uses and they mention Nielsen as one of them. Then I ask if they think it’s good and ALL of them say, no, but that is what the agency uses. ComScore (their competitor) is not perfect by any means, but is so much better it’s not even funny.
But what really surprises me are the “cutting edge” ad agencies that are not leading their clients focus by disposing of Nielsen for a better product. Just to point out how bad Nielsen is with their @Plan service, let me give you a real-world example.
I work for a rep firm that reps over 50 major travel sites. One of them is LonelyPlanet.com (the leading travel guide book publisher worldwide) and has a huge online audience. We tried for over one year to get LonelyPlanet in the @Plan service to no avail. While all the time they had sites like http://www.LowestFares.com which doesn’t even exist anymore within the service.
Talk about upside down. You think calling Dell support is a frustrating…try calling a Nielsen rep (all based domestically) and believe you me, you’d perfer being on hold with a Dell customer service agent.
Posted by bob sacco at July 11th, 2007 at 6:25 amI open multiple tabs
Posted by Dewd Seven at July 11th, 2007 at 7:28 am,which sit in the background sometimes for many hours unread. Isn’t this an obvious problem for this new setup?