Explorations in New Media - Latest Comments

Re: What’s the best way to measure traffic online?

Barbara Selvin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:07:06 -0000

Great post, Andrew. I will use it in my class on the changing news industry at Stony Brook University.

Re: What’s the best way to measure traffic online?

joeboydston — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:53:43 -0000

As someone who works on the business side of an online news site, I caution against emphasis on pageviews. This metric is easily manipulated by changing the user interface of the site. Take photo galleries for example, you can implement a "click for next photo" that will generate a ton of pageviews. Or use a javascript photo browser (where the photos automatically change) to get the same effect with only one pageview.

Bottom line is that pageviews are heavily influenced by website design and do not accurately represent reader patterns.

From a business perspective, frequency is a far more valuable metric. As an advertiser I want to know how many times my ad is shown to each person, not how many times in total is was displayed.

Re: Why can’t news organizations monetize traffic spikes?

joeboydston — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:20:15 -0000

In my opinion the primary reason online ad rates are low is that they are not effective. Users don't click on the ads, no brainer right?

As I describe briefly on my blog, we have found that marketing strategies that focus on increasing frequency will yield MUCH higher results. I believe that traffic driven by one time spikes in activity provide very little value to most advertisers.

http://www.joeboydston.com/blo...