At b5media, pageviews are a core element of how we assess our blogs and how we appeal to advertisers. So it’s interesting to watch the fireworks happening within the blogosphere about whether the pageview is relevant anymore. Some of the issues involved the different methodologies and approaches used by analytics service providers such as comScore, Alexa and Hitwise to count traffic. Then, there are stickier issues such as Ajax, which don’t generate page views but nevertheless involve people visiting a Web site. Ars Technica offers up a thorough summary of what’s happening, including some thoughts on comScore’s goal to develop tools that include Ajax-related traffic.
“While page views will not altogether cease to be a relevant measure of a site’s value, it’s clear that there is an increasing need to consider page views alongside newer, more relevant measures,” said comScore CEO Dr. Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore Networks, added:. comScore is proud to continue carrying the torch as an industry innovator. With the development of a new suite of metrics that will effectively address the Web 2.0 landscape by including enhanced measures of user engagement and advertising exposure. We will be introducing these new metrics to the industry in 2007.”
Steve Rubel, who has been touching upon the pageview debate recently, weighs in that comScore is cooked, and that Quantcast is going “eat comScore’s lunch“. What I like about Rubel’s argument is this statement: “Comscore needs to wake up and realize that we’re in a Long Tail world where top 10 lists matter less. Marketers want to know about the influence circles within the niches that matter to them – and those niches are often tiny.”
This is particularly relevant to b5 because we’re a class long tail network with dozens of niche blogs with loyal readers that are valuable to advertisers looking to reach a particular audience. This approach has been a key part of b5’s strategy since the network was spawned last year. This means we’re focused on the value of our channels as opposed to single properties but we think this approach is valuable and relevant to our consituents: bloggers, readers and advertisers.
At the end of the day, the most important thing for advertisers looking to put more of their budgets online is having a standard or standards that they can trust to give them a better grasp of who’s out there and what they’re doing. This is going to be an interesting discussion to watch going forward.
The Uncertain Future of the Pageview
At b5media, pageviews are a core element of how we assess our blogs and how we appeal to advertisers. So it’s interesting to watch the fireworks happening within the blogosphere about whether the pageview is relevant anymore. Some of the issues involved the different methodologies and approaches used by analytics service providers such as comScore, Alexa and Hitwise to count traffic. Then, there are stickier issues such as Ajax, which don’t generate page views but nevertheless involve people visiting a Web site. Ars Technica offers up a thorough summary of what’s happening, including some thoughts on comScore’s goal to develop tools that include Ajax-related traffic.
“While page views will not altogether cease to be a relevant measure of a site’s value, it’s clear that there is an increasing need to consider page views alongside newer, more relevant measures,” said comScore CEO Dr. Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore Networks, added:. comScore is proud to continue carrying the torch as an industry innovator. With the development of a new suite of metrics that will effectively address the Web 2.0 landscape by including enhanced measures of user engagement and advertising exposure. We will be introducing these new metrics to the industry in 2007.”
Steve Rubel, who has been touching upon the pageview debate recently, weighs in that comScore is cooked, and that Quantcast is going “eat comScore’s lunch“. What I like about Rubel’s argument is this statement: “Comscore needs to wake up and realize that we’re in a Long Tail world where top 10 lists matter less. Marketers want to know about the influence circles within the niches that matter to them – and those niches are often tiny.”
This is particularly relevant to b5 because we’re a class long tail network with dozens of niche blogs with loyal readers that are valuable to advertisers looking to reach a particular audience. This approach has been a key part of b5’s strategy since the network was spawned last year. This means we’re focused on the value of our channels as opposed to single properties but we think this approach is valuable and relevant to our consituents: bloggers, readers and advertisers.
At the end of the day, the most important thing for advertisers looking to put more of their budgets online is having a standard or standards that they can trust to give them a better grasp of who’s out there and what they’re doing. This is going to be an interesting discussion to watch going forward.