The Fallacy of Time Spent on Site

When I was working at Dow Jones, senior management put a lot of pressure on Nielsen to replace unique visitors with Time on Site as the primary metric. This was mainly because the product team at WSJ was using AJAX applications to improve the user experience instead of forcing users to click to a new page and refresh the advertising. Nielsen seemed open to the suggestion, and now I see TOS quoted all the time. But here are the major problems with it:

1. Advertisers don't care about TOS; they care about impressions, and they still calculate CPM. TOS doesn't factor into the equation.
2. TOS is skewed by users who come to your site and leave without closing their browser.
3. A high TOS metric doesn't necessarily indicate a positive user experience or high user engagement. Sometimes it means users can't find what they're looking for and won't come back.
4. TOS doesn't necessarily correlate with a conversion. This needs to be calculated for each individual site. In some cases users who spend more time on your site may be your best customers. In this case, it would be an important metric, but it only captures one aspect of a user's visit, and it should never replace the Unique Visitor count, which most accurately measures the size of your funnel.

Bit.ly offering even shorter URL's via J.mp

Silicon Alley Insider reports that Bit.ly is offering even shorter URL's for posting on twitter, reducing the number of characters by 2 and leaving more room for your tweets. The service is offered via j.mp.

Newspaper revenue falls 29%, Online Falls 15%

Mashable has a great roundup of the latest numbers from the Newspaper Association of America. Overall Q2 revenue fell 29% year-over-year. What's most interesting is that online revenue, once thought to be the last hope for newspapers, fell more than 15%. Estimated 2009 revenue will have fallen almost 50% since 2005. The decline in revenue isn't surprising, but the speed of the free fall is, and the huge decline in online revenue certainly doesn't bode well for the future of newspapers. Mashable also offers 5 ways for newspapers to avoid extinction.

Here's a switch: publish to Twitter from Facebook

InsideFacebook reported yesterday that Facebook has just launched an application that allows business profiles and public figures to publish to Twitter. That's a switch - usually people post to Facebook from Twitter. And why not launch the application for all users? That could be the next logical move, and would certainly make Facebook the largest source of updates on Twitter.

This move, along with their semi-clandestine "Pay with Facebook" program, indicates an aggressive growth strategy in terms of both market share and revenue sources. It will be interesting to see how the Twitter/Facebook relationship plays out.

Rupert Murdoch wants to put up a paywall on all Fox Interactive sites

Funny...when Rupe first took over WSJ just after I left in 2007, he wanted to take down the pay wall, hoping to drive revenue from online advertising. I'm sure the 8-figure online subscription revenue is what changed his mind. Now he wants to put up pay walls on all of his news sites, thinking he'll be a trend-setter and that other news organizations will follow. This could be a big mistake. I've always maintained that WSJ has a niche B-B audience that is willing to pay for its unique content, not to mention advertisers that are willing to pay a premium CPM to get in front of its high-end audience. Let's not forget that most WSJ subscription fees are paid for by subscribers' employers.

Users spending less time on newspaper sites

A great chart at SAI shows the difference in time spent on site from 2008 to 2009 for NYT, WSJ, WaPo and USA Today. WSJ's numbers have shown the most dramatic drop. Interesting. When I was at WSJ, the higher-ups used their clout with the IAB to consider replacing the Page View metric with Time Spent on Site. This was because their use of Ajax, while creating a better user experience, wasn't ticking up the Page View meter. This may come back to bite them, but ultimately, if advertisers want WSJ's premium demographic they'll pay to be there.

Newspaper Classifieds lose to Craigslist

This chart at Silicon Alley Insider shows the conversion of the billions of dollars of newspaper classified revenue into millions of dollars of revenue for Craigslist.
When I worked at some large newspapers, it became clear that we couldn't possibly compete with Craigslist's free online classified listings. We watched our classified revenue plummet while losing marketshare to Craigslist, Zillow, Trulia, Cars.com and others. Meanwhile, some managers clung to a strategy destined for failure: online upsells from ever-decreasing print sales. Finally, partnering with the online pure-plays became the last great hope, but why would anyone go to Monster's jobs listings through another site? It all comes down to where the online community is. As long as newspapers continue to attract a large enough audience and utilize effective cross-promotion, they should be able to hold on to some classified revenue, but it will never be the billions they once garnered as the largest distribution source for advertisers when print was the only game in town.

Will Return Shortly...

Taking a break from blogging this week while I travel across Route 66 in a Chrysler Sebring convertible. Started in Milwaukee, picked up Route 66 in Joliet, IL, then traveled through Missouri and Kansas. In Oklahoma City now en route to Amarillo, then Santa Fe, Flagstaff, and Las Vegas. Back next week.

Real-Time Search Picking up Steam

Twitter announced last week that it would expand search beyond its own site, not only indexing search terms on its own site but the pages tweets link to as well.

This would transform Twitter into a real-time internet search engine based upon what users are twittering about. Very cool.

Looks like Twitter has some competition on that front, though. Two startups, OneRiot and TweetMeme have already begun searching linked pages on Twitter and indexing text, videos, and images.

URL Shorteners - Twitter Switches From TinyURL To Bit.ly

Finally! Twitter has switched its default URL shortener from TinyURL to Bit.ly. From a marketing perspective, this is much more useful! Bit.ly has killer tracking features, allowing you to look at number of clicks, locations, conversations, and more. If you're running a social marketing campaign, it's essential to be able to track your clicks by source, and bit.ly is one of the best tools for combining URL shortening and tracking all in one. Plus, it allows you to tweet directly from their site using the new URL.

Just for Fun: DickensURL converts your URL into a Charles Dickens quote. He's my favorite author. Here's a link to my blog incorporating a quote from Hard Times:
http://dickensurl.com/a262/There_is_a_wisdom_of_the_Head_and__there_is_a_wisdom_of_the_Heart

Newspaper Bailout Coming?

With the recent threat of the NYT shutting down the Boston Globe, the politicians in Washington are starting to get involved in the newspaper industry. They fear the very freedom of the press is at risk. Joe Weisenthal at Silicon Alley Insider thinks a newspaper bailout is inevitable, at least for some of the top players (NYT, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and WaPo.)
He brings up the possibility of a national media bank that would provide low-interest bridge loans or grants.
I can't see any other solution for the industry besides a non -profit approach. When I worked at The Christian Science Monitor, our Publisher argued that since we were a non-profit, we should pursue non-proift fund raising techniques. But the Board of Trustees wouldn't buy it. Our Publisher left soon afterwards, and now the paper has converted from a daily paper to a weekly magazine. I still think our Publisher was right, but it will be interesting to see how the Monitor performs under this new approach. Could they have the answer that will save the industry? Probably not, but it just may work for the Monitor's unique style of analytical journalism, which lends itself to a weekly.

Pressure on the Presses

Excellent chart at WSJ showing the demise of newspapers across the country. Includes layoff details.

Top Social Media for Marketers: Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook

Good article on social media marketing and the sites marketers use most. It points out an inverse relationship between length of time a company has been at it and the amount of time spent each week on it. Those who've been at it only a few months say they spend 2 hours per week on social media marketing, while those who've been at for years spend 20 hours per week.

The 5 Phases of Social Media Marketing

Good article at Social Computing Journal on the 5 phases of Social Media Marketing:
1. Discovery
2. Strategy
3. Skills
4. Execution
5. Maintenance

Makes a great point that a good social media campaign is NOT free, as outlined in the BusinessWeek article Debunking Six Social Media Myths. Although many of the tools are free, a good campaign requires skill, experience, and money to incorporate e-commerce, branding, style sheets, etc.

Infinite ROI on Social Marketing

Augustine Fou gives an interesting thesis at Clickz on why the ROI on social marketing is infinite. He claims there's no such thing as Social Media.

Stream Your Tweets in Google AdSense Display Ads

The latest in social media marketing: Google has leveraged Twitter's technology to allow you to stream your 5 most recent tweets in your display ads that are part of the AdSense network. Read more about it at ditii.com http://www.ditii.com/2009/04/04/google-twitter-adsense-ads/.

This is by far the coolest development since behavioral targeting.

I discovered it at Mashable when I saw this ad for TurboTax:

"Times Pimps, Pillages Globe"

This is one of my favorite headlines ever. What else would you expect from the Boston Herald?
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_e/view/2009_04_07_Times_pimps__pillages_Globe/

For the sake of my ex-colleagues at the Globe, I hope everything works out for them.

The Ad Network Dilemma

This week AdAge reported online CPM's are down 20% industry wide. The culprit? Online ad networks.

This is the basic dilemma of all online publishers. Do you devalue your brand by allowing advertisers to pay a discounted price for your ad space, or do you maximize your sell-through rate by allowing ad networks to sell your otherwise unsold inventory at reduced rates?

The trick is to be vigilant in not allowing your target advertisers to get on your site through the networks. This is easier for highly trafficked sites with a desirable demographic. When I worked at wsj.com, the ad sales team never strayed from rate card. But they didn't need to. They knew their clients would pay a premium to be on The Wall Street Journal.

But what about less popular sites, like The Christian Science Monitor's csmonitor.com? (one of my favorite sites - I worked there for 6 years.) Their revenue is comprised mainly of print subscription revenue, although they recently announced a switch to a mainly digital model. With low advertiser demand, they may have no choice but to offer their inventory at lower rates and try to sell as much inventory as possible through the ad networks.

The bottom line is this: if your content isn't differentiated enough, you won't deliver a targeted audience or garner a premium CPM. Your lower-than-ideal sell-through rates will force you to surrender your inventory to the ad networks. There's no shame in this. Everyone does it, and it's part of any smart revenue strategy. But before allocating a huge percentage of your inventory to the ad networks, make sure you've exhausted all possible channels through topic-based and behavioral targeting. And by all means make sure you block your target advertisers from appearing on your site through the networks.

SEO Tips: Incoming Links

Incoming links to your site are one of the most important factors in gaining Google page rank. It's extremely important that the incoming links use the keywords you're optimizing for and that they're not buried in Javascript or images.

The following is a list of incoming links with no value:

•Images
•Company Name
•“Click here”
•You can be penalized for outgoing links if they link to a “link farm”
•links from a site that isn’t indexed, links from a link farm
•links that point somewhere else first, like an ad server that records the click
•Links within Javascript
•Links that don’t use the HREF tag but a Javascript event handler such as onclick or rewrite
•Links with a rel=“nofollow” tag. This allows sites to prevent people from placing links just to boost their Page rank.

Have you taken control of your online identity?

I just calculated my online identity at http://www.onlineidcalculator.com/. The result? I'm a digital dabbler. Here's their definition of a digital dabbler:

"There is some information on the Web about you that supports the personal brand you're trying to communicate but not a ton of it. What you have to do here is beef up the amount of on-brand information about you on the Web. Fortunately, this is an easy fix. You can do that by starting your own blog and updating it consistently, as well as creating a public LinkedIn profile and writing articles for online publications."

So that's just what I'm going to do.