I have been thinking about it for a while but Steven Rubel says it better than me. So please read that. New web application make the ruling principle of page view less relevant and maybe totally irrelevant (one of the guilty on that one is ajax that makes page refresh inexistant). Quoting
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.
I think it is about time marketers and media agency pay more (REALLY MORE) attention to other pararmeters like loyalty/churn, user lifetime, time spent on website, time spent per page, ability to lead conversion, level of influence, advertising memory and awareness generation, and other things that we are discovering as we speak.
Internet is a media that is way more complex and sophisticated that only page views. So why advertising should not be?
Of course this is not for tomorrow but within 12/24 month will hear much more about that and Comscore/Hitwise and Nielsen will have by then to provide real alternative way to measure and benchmark websites. But internet companies will also have to learn that and educate the market with what really matters: the value of an end user.
Most websites are still the same as years ago. They don't use AJAX and don't intend to do so. People don't even know what AJAX is. So it will take longer than a year or two to make pageviews past.
However, we already have more interesting values than simple pageviews: the time spent by each user on a site. That's probably more interesting to know a web site's users spend 8 minutes on a site than to know they've seen 2 pages...
Does it mean web sites are going to be analyzed as TV shows?
Posted by: kwa | 03 December 2006 at 07:13 PM
Kwa i am precising that this is too early for today and of course not enough websites are concerned by it. But it will be the case more and more. Startup pages being more and more popular (Google and MSN will soon be very popular) this will also affect the perception by advertiser.
Btw try to explain today to an advertiser TODAY that wants to advertise in Second Life that he has to buy advertising by CPM....
This reflexion is worth from now on and will generalize within less than 2 years.
Posted by: ouriel | 04 December 2006 at 08:39 AM