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Nielsen/NetRatings has changed the way they rank and rate web sites. They announced that they will now be ranking websites based on how long users spend on the site and not by just how many page views a web site has. Using this new ranking system, AOL has propelled over and past rival Google to achieve the number one position.
“This new measure will report the total time spent for all visitors and provide a better understanding of users’ total engagement of Web pages and volume of traffic” Nielsen said.
This is great news as many of us in this industry have believed for quite a long time, that a web site’s effectiveness needs to be looked at on a much lower and more detailed level than just page views. Even more importantly, these new measurements could have an effect on how online advertising is priced and sold. Very soon web sites are going to be held to a higher standard than just a plain old CPM rate.
Another reason that I believe this sort of metrics will become standard in the very new future is because of the new technologies that are coming out. Ajax is an example that automatically refreshes content without having users refresh a page. Using page views as a success metric is already obsolete, in the near future, more people will start understanding that.
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Technorati Tags: Nielsen/NetRatings, AOL, Google, page views, CPM
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I’d love to see this change media pricing models. Just think about the ability to purchase media and get charged per minute. It applies a performance element and accountability for the publishers to create content that keep users on their pages and in the site.
This is very encouraging.
Firstly, I love that time on site is becoming gaining popularity rather than just impressions based metrics.
Be that as it may, the fact that AOL is tops is pure bunk. AOL purposely makes their customers think they have to “connect to AOL” every time they get online with their RoadRunner service. This makes them use the AOL browser to surf instead of FireFox or IE. In some cases, people will launch AOL to first connect before then opening another browser for surfing.
I bet they are including use of the AOL browser as time on site even though it is simply browser usage. How about we include time in Firefox as a content channel and see how they show up on this list.
Geoff - That would be incredibly interesting… Charging on a minute basis, wow… I don;t see that happening anytime soon, but we are going in the right direction. Thanks for the comment!
Adam - You know sometimes you and I think so much alike it is scary. Your thinking is right on, since I wrote this post, I have been doing more digging. And Nielson included in the metrics people using the AOL Instant Messenger. Which totally blow these stats out of the water.
So if someone signs on to their AOL IM and it sits on for the eight hours they are at work, AOL gets credit for 8 hours of stickiness? BS!
WOW, they used AIM. Did they include the use of Google docs, GTalk, Google Desktop, Yahoo messenger, Launch Cast, Itunes, IChat, … …
What a huge farce. I wonder what AOL had to pay for them to release that data.