April 12, 2007: As the Medium Evolves, So Do the Metrics

You may have noticed the recent news item in Mediaweek that people are starting to worry that newer web functionality, such as AJAX, will undercut traditional web site performance metrics, particularly pageviews. AJAX provides a faster, sleeker, more interactive user experience that bypasses page reloads for many common interactions. For example, it plays a key role in the application-like interfaces of such services as Yahoo mail and Google maps.

Now it appears that, as AJAX inevitably evolves from cutting edge to commonplace, the media industry is awakening to the pageview issue and pondering options. As the Mediaweek article notes, one possibility is increased attention to the metric of total time spent on the site--the product of total visits and average time per visit.
We've been watching this number for awhile. It's been growing as we've made the site more interactive, diverse, and engaging. In fact, although we received more pageviews in January of this year than in March, in terms of audience time on the site the reverse was true: total minutes edged up by about 1.5%, to a new record. March minutes on the site in 2007 were 117% higher than the same month last year. We like the total time metric not only because it's AJAX-neutral, but also because it gives a fair accounting for audience activities such as consuming audio, video, slide shows, and community activities.

By the way, you can configure AJAX functions to refresh the ads when the user takes action, meaning that while we may lose pageviews, we don't lose ad impressions.

This isn't the first time a key online business metric has been eclipsed. Remember the dark ages, 10 years ago, when site performance was all about "hits?" Usually that meant server calls. In the old days, many web pages were so simple that the entire page would load in a single call. As pages became more complex, with a myriad of calls, the "hit" metric was diluted until it was meaningless and the pageview came into favor. Today, a few more years down the pike, the pageview is approaching obsolescence.

The changing landscape of key performance indicators (KPIs) is part of the experience of building a new industry from the ground up. Even the most fundamental definitions of success are in flux. While some may find the uncertainty unsettling, we're excited by the opportunity to take an active role in helping to shape the new benchmarks.