Finding Meaning in the Metrics

October 2009Dana Chinn

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• Why measuring audiences is different for online

• Behavioral vs. attitudinal

• Basic site metricsCounting vs. calculating engagement

• Social media metricsUnderstanding followers, analyzing content

• Attitudinal researchFinding out the “why” of current, new, potential audiences

Web analytics essentials

Traditional ad-supported business model

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Newspapers

MagazinesRadio

TVDirect mail

Yellow PagesOutdoor

HIGH BARRIERS

TO ENTRY

...few competitors

...subsidized audiences defined by

demographics,geography

...everyone in its place

...can only measure mass e.g., paid circulation

Online ad-supported business model

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NewspapersMagazinesRadioTV

Direct mailYellow PagesOutdoor

Online

Online-only

...everyone’s online, competing with each other

...little geographic focus

...few barriers to entry

...(highly) subsidized audiences defined

by individual behavior, attitudes

...can measure anything (niches, engagement)

...change in behavior, business

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Behavioral research: What people did when they visited a site

Two ways to understand online audiences

Attitudinal research: What people said they did, and why they go or don’t go to a site

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100,000,000+ monthly unique visitors

Journalism Online projects it will have

“Journalism Online Says Letters of Intent Now Cover More Than 1,000 Media Outlets,” paidcontent.org, Sept. 14, 2009

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Who: Nikki Finke

Content: 24/7 unique info about The Industry

UVs: “a few” 100,000 Industry execs who visit 10x/day

Value: $10 million“Call Me,” by Tad Friend, The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 2009

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What really matters in online?

What people do...

...who they are, and what they think.

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Unique visitors

visit websites,

generate page views.

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A “unique visitor” is actually a “unique computer”

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Work

Home

Hotel

= 3 unique visitors

Unique visitors may be over- or undercounted

= 3 unique visitors

Work

= 1 unique visitor

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The no. of unique visitors is based on the time period you specify.S M T W Th F S

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July 6-12

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...on July 1 is six; July 31, two.

...for the week of July 13 is five.

...for the month of July is seven.

July 13-19

July 20-26

The number of unique visitors...“Daily unique visitors”

“Weekly unique visitors”

“Monthly unique visitors”

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The math of visits

A visit is a period of activity separated by at least 30 minutes of inactivity.

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 20 minutes, then clicks into CNN.com.

One visit

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for 45 minutes, talks on the phone for 30 minutes without touching the keyboard, then hangs up and goes back to your site for 20 minutes before clicking into CNN.com. Two visits

A visitor clicks into your site at 1 p.m., surfs for an hour, leaves his computer for 29 minutes, and then comes back and surfs for another hour before clicking into CNN.com.

One visit

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Two ratios

One proportion

the bounce rate of the page where people enter your site most often

visits per unique visitor page views per visit

Calculating engagement

Example: 50%

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Visits per weekly unique visitor

Are visitors coming to your site with the frequency you need to build loyal, satisfied audiences ?

If you update your site 24/7, is your content engaging enough to compel someone to visit more than two or three times a week?

2.5 visits per weekExample

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Page views per visit, by week

When visitors do come to your site, are they engaging with its content?

Does a high number suggest visitors can’t find what they want?

3.6 page views per visitExample

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Bounce rate of top entry pages

One visit with one page view

to the home page= 1 bounce

No. of bounces+

No. of visits that started with the home page and had 2+ page views

= 100% of visits

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Source: “Can CNN, the Go-To Site, Get You to Stay?” by Brian Stetler, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2009

Home page bounce rateExample

= over 50%

Over half of the visits to the CNN.com home pageleft CNN.com without clicking into any other pages

Best (?) cases: Came only to get the headlines

Worst cases: Couldn’t find what they wanted Didn’t like what they saw

Home page has dynamic content not captured with page views (check your business model)

Newsroom numbers vs. advertising numbers

• Census data100% of all visitors, visits, page views for all sections

• Internal dataConfidential

• OmnitureGoogle AnalyticsWebTrendsetc.

• Web Analytics Association

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• Panel dataActivity from a sample of self-selected people. Only total site data for a limited number of sites.

• External dataUsed to compare sites

• comScoreNielsenCompeteetc.

• Interactive Advertising Bureau

Newsroom Advertising

Types of social media channels

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From “Five essentials for social media marketing,” by Lisa Wehr, CEO/Oneupweb, iMedia Connection, July 17, 2009

Sharing

Networking

News

BookmarkingReviews

For consumersthe true value of a networkis measured by the frequency of engagement of the participants.

Social media: a constant stream of calls to action

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-- Interactive Advertising Bureau Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions, May 2009

Understand Twitter’s simple complexity,understand how social media is measured

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Followers

Content

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The perfect (measurable) Tweet

• A call to action to participate, engage with youLook at this. Go here. What do you think?

• A link To get news, information Tweets are now a primary news source, the new home page

To respond to the call to action

• A #hashtag and/or keywords

• A comment“Commenting is important, even essential.” Pete Cashmore, Mashable, 9/21/09 http://mashable.com/2009/09/20/commenting-on-retweets/

RT/via @handle + call to action/comment + link + #hashtag

Note: Twitter will be changing its RT and comment functions 26

“Perfect” tweets are less than 120 characters

Lost the link

Watch handle, hashtag sizes

100 characters 111 characters

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Analyzing content Review hashtags, keywords, sentiment

See a list of Twitter tools at http://www.newsnumbers.com/socialmedia.html

“When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a signaling event.”

--Rishab Ghosh, co-founder of Topsy, a search engine for tweets, in “Live in the Moment,” by Clive Thompson, Wired magazine, October 2009

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Is your news org part of the conversationin real-time web signaling events?

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See a list of Twitter tools at http://www.newsnumbers.com/socialmedia.html

Analyzing followers Look for influencers.

Review reach, following/follower ratio

Do your followers identify with your keywords?

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Analyze your follower profilesto assess their likelihood of engagement

See a list of Twitter tools at http://www.newsnumbers.com/socialmedia.html

1. What was the purpose of your visit today?

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Attitudinal researchDo you know the people behind the clicks?

2. Were you able to complete your task today?

3. If not, why not?

4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about our site?

Caution: Pop-up survey data is a truth but not the complete truth. Pop-ups are only completed by those who feel like it...it’s not a representative sample.

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Do you know who’s not coming to your site,and why?

• Start with focus groups, usability studies, etc.

• Follow with surveys that reach a representative sample of the target audience

Measure niche audiences,not“all people who could possibly be interested in coming to our site at any time for whatever reason.”

(not thinking about you)

Define success by who your audiences are and what they’re doing, thinking

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Universal Studios Hollywood ad, 2007

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Dana ChinnLecturerUSC Annenberg School of JournalismE-mail: chinn@usc.eduPhone: 213-821-6259

www.newsnumbers.com Blog on web analytics for newsrooms Delicious bookmarks Basic metrics; video metrics Social media metrics methodology Twitter Tools list