Even though advertising is the primary source of Revenue for media websites we need to focus on what that foundation is built and sustained on: Valuable Audience. Not all audiences are created equal. If youa re able to attract and retain an audience that is not duplicated elsewhere you can drive your Rate Card up and therefore drive more Revenue over the long-term. And the more engaged and responsive your audience is to your content and advertising within your site the easier it is to retain your advertisers as well.

A large page view number might attract advertisers but a highly engaged audience will retain them. And what ultimately drives retention of audience? Content. And how do you measure the value of your content? Engagement of your audience with your content. And not forced engagement with page turns but engagement driven by customer interactions like Views, Comments and Shares.

Thanks for the great insight!

I do agree that publishers should look at article views over page views, but I’m still not completely convinced about the “unique” part. What’s unique in this matter? When I visit a news website three times a day, me myself and I can be three unique visitors on the same day. Which would be true in the case of suffering from schizophrenia.. But I’m pretty healthy. Anyway, I think we’re getting close to something awesome (the holy grail of online publishing?), but we’re not there yet :-)

Cheers!

HA! :-) We are yet to define a technical term for this phenomena, but we call it the “Britney Spears effect” around the office, so I think it is safe to say that we are very much on the same page. However, I personally tend to differ between an Organizational KPI (which reflects and drives the overall objectives) – And a quality metric, which is used either as a direct proxy for before mentioned KPI or simply as a metric to optimize it.

Because, as you so rightfully say, a proper organizational KPI and goal could (should) be something around a Lifetime Visitor Value metric, but in working towards making that better, I do think that Unique Articles Views are a well defined metric that can actually help in doing so (notice the Unique part, which is a visitor grouping component). Definitely a whole lot better that Page Views.

Great input. Thanks Bertwin.

n.b.
We really need to define this “Britney Spears effect” – So any suggestions on what to call it, is appreciated!

Cheers
d. :-)

Profit per Article does come a little closer to what publishers should drive. But the value of an article depends on the subject (it shouldn’t, but it does): an article about the housing market is more valuable than an article about a cat that had to be rescued from a tree, just because advertisers in the banking world pay more than advertisers who sell ladders.

I think publishers should look at something like “quality per visit(or)”: When someone writes a reaction to an article, he’s more likely to come back, write some more reactions, read a couple of new articles, click a banner. Besides that, it would be nice if visitors tell their friends about the articles they read (via mail, facebook, etcetera). All these actions will result in more visits, page views, money.

Something like Article views or Profit per Article drives focus to the article, instead of focus on visitors…

This of course, all in the perfect world..

We are in agreement. And I think we might actually just attack the issue from different angles. In the perfect scenario, I might go for a Profit-per-Article metric, as the optimum News Media KPI (depends on the organization of course).

Today though, I am not sure I would personally go for an ad-views metric (when talking about News Media), as it disregards the Reader and it makes you dependent on a business-model that might change or need experimentation in the short term. Also having in mind that ad-views might be slightly too aggressive a metric for a news media organization – and if not used wisely, we could see an opening for optimizing towards the lowest common denominator.

It is a splendid metric for more traditional publishers – AND I think you are very much on track! :-)

Cheers
d.

One could argue that Page views or Article views could be increasing but profitability be doing down at the same time (especially under CPC conditions).

However, CPM/CPC optimization might be to far from “actionalibility” (just like saying revenue is ultimate KPI for ecommerce – it’s too distant from tactical actions and moves too slowly to be a really good KPI). Just a thought, maybe I’m totally off track here…

Stéphane