The Need for New Audience Metric

Posted on October 25, 2006
Filed Under What's New, Advertising/Marketing |

Robert Scoble wrote today about the need for a new audience metric. Coincidentally I’d been writing about it late last week:

says Scoble:

“….we need to measure stuff other than just whether a download got completed or not. She says we need a “likeability” stat. I think it goes further than that.

There’s another stat out there called “engagement.””

This is a company that went that route for TV in the UK and built micro-analysis systems.

And here’s what I said a week or so back.
What about differentially rewarding content producers?
What about ad services that are set up specifically to service quality content production?
What about ad servers that allow users to hit some kind of preference button that leaks an extra 0.1 cents to this piece of content over and above other pieces of content or takes account of time and attention?

How real is that!
Well, why does the web world always have to fall back on a lack of differentiation? We have wonderful technologists who seem capable of making everything the same and who could as easily make many things different.

What would be the point?
Revenues currently accrue more to the platform than the content creator. That’s fine if you’re a studio whose content has already earned out its investment so that every extra 0.1 cents is cream. But the platform cannot continue indefinitely to be the major beneficiary.

Why not?
Because surely there’s some market forces out there that are going to say: hmmm. Great content deserves great rewards, over and above the simple differentiator of niche/not niche and we can build a platform and business model that delivers.

How can you differentially reward content?
Right now the system is set up to serve the platform and the advertiser with the content producer last on the list. Content the peasantry. What if my content keeps you on the page longer than his or her piece of content because of its intrinsic worth to the viewer/reader?

Why would you want to differentiate?
Are we saying the web world should abandon two millenia of tradition in supporting and rewarding content that makes a difference. That judgment has always been imperfect but technology can handle imperfect.


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