Online Publishers Still Having Difficulty Counting
from the math-is-hard dept
The common advertising problem that "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" was promised to be remedied by the introduction of the supposedly measurable medium of the Internet. However, in practice, the measurement of online audiences has proven to be difficult, at best. Most recently, Comscore reported a 9.3 percent drop in Facebook's traffic, which was met not by fears that the traffic to the super popular site was waning, but rather by explanations that that Comscore was likely under counting traffic from students who were doing their surfing from home during the summer. So, despite being around for over a decade, online publishers continue to have issues reporting consistent, accurate measures of their online audiences. Depending on who you ask, the number of pageviews for a site from one source may be double the number reported from another. To make things more confusing, earlier this year, Nielsen/NetRatings announced that it would no longer use pageviews as the standard unit of measure, opting rather for time spent on a website. As the amount of money spent on online advertising approaches $20 billion this year, this measurement issue is starting to become significant. However, this complaint about online advertising is ironic, since measurement in the other mediums is, at best, a crap shoot. Perhaps the problem with online advertising is that it, in fact, has too many numbers -- with television, print and radio, audience numbers are typically estimates. So, while those numbers may not be accurate, at least they're consistent.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: advertising, measurement
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Metrics are hard
The thing is advertisers know this but they don't care - as long as everyone believes the same lie. The problem with the web is that there's too many different lies (although there is just also a dash of truth) - so people are looking around for the one they're going to pick. Auditors want to be the chosen one and publishers want the one that will make them look best. We'll see who takes the gold. :)
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done with it
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Re: done with it
Best I can tell from their vague TOS and blog, we are not allowed to advertise for traffic that lands on any page with adsense ads. Since they mix CPM and CPC together, they seem to consider generated traffic on a page with CPM ads as badly as clicking your own ads...
Technically, it's grounds for a lawsuit, but I can't afford to sue Google, can you?
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One Lie To Rule Them All
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Problems with valuing online advertising
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This is the first little puff of wind at the leading edge of a storm that will hit the entire advertising industry (online and off) with Category 5 fury, and leave a changed landscape when it dissipates. After it's done, intrusive and annoying advertising will be as dead as the dodo, as one of the more conspicuous changes. Another is likely the downsizing of the whole industry, by a significant factor.
The flashpoint will no doubt be some combination of foo-on-demand and filtering technology, involving convergence and the absolute right (and simple physical power) of a computer owner to absolute control over their machine.
The end result will probably include all of lawsuits, attempts at ineffective regulation of how we use our own hardware, DMCA-style, and a technical arms-race between blockers, blocker-user-blockers, and blocker-dodging ads that are ever more intrustive and disruptive -- and already, the worst of the lot (popup-implemented fork-bombs for example, that recursively spawn infinite browser windows with disastrous consequences, and those have been around since the nineties!) qualify as malware in my book.
And here you guys are, looking up at the sky, muttering about it being a rainy week, and reaching for your umbrellas.
In a year or two you'll be seeing major changes in this area. In the worst case, you'll be seeing executives BASE-jumping from their office windows without parachutes, this time without the buildings in question being on fire and about to collapse -- rather, just their stock portfolios...
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Who's system is better?
Any company can say their method is best but who really knows? Advertising rates determined by another company is corrupt as far as I'm concerned. Can you imagine the behind the scenes bribes that must occur.
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Wide variances in advertising figures
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