Category Archives: research

Measuring internet “engagement”

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Robert Scoble’s asking a great question today about how to measure “engagement” at a website as opposed to just a visit. This issue was recently addressed at some length in the big debate over Comscore metrics for Myspace that Danah Boyd challenged as questionable.

As I suggested in that debate and Scoble is saying now, there’s an important difference between a user who simply loads a page and leaves the site immediately vs a user who engages with the site.

Experiments are needed, since it may be as simple as taking a ratio of total unique visitors to total time online to get a sense of how engaged the visitors are.

Of course that does NOT necessarily translate into somebody who’ll buy from advertisers which is the type of metric that sponsors are most interested in. We wouldn’t see much Golf on network TV if traffic was the metric, but when you count the fact that golf watchers come from a great demographic for big ticket items it works out for the networks who can sell to a key group (e.g. sell Lexuses, Diamondses, and ringses …..my precious!…..)

Even more complications with metrics are here in the form of RSS syndication, extensive duplication of information (e.g. this blog is auto duplicated over at Facebook), and the new gadgetification of the desktop where mini applications are going to run wild all over the place, making a “page view” less relevant, or irrelevant, for many websites and advertisers and measurers.

Re-Ze-lated:
Funny – ZeFrank on “Rocketbooming” your metrics
RocketBoom says Zefrank is full of Zeerrors.

Danny I was hoping for more – how about a Search UNconference?

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I don’t know Danny Sullivan personally aside from comments at his blog and forums, but all reports say he’s a fine guy and easily one of the top search specialists in the world.

When it looked like Danny would be leaving Search Engine Strategies earlier in the year I was optimistic that he might break those of us in the publishing and search marketing fields out of the ‘same old speakers’ and ‘same old pitches’ one tends to hear at the two main search conferences: SES and WebmasterWorld’s “PubCon”.   However he’s not leaving yet, so I’m happy for him I guess but disappointed he won’t come up with something new.

I think many would agree that Danny’s the guy who could bring something really new and powerful to the growing, global, search marketing human (and information) network. Something that would capture the spirit of “Web 2.0” which is far more collaborative, information rich, virtual, and unstructured than the internet of the 1990s.   Also, there are a HUGE number of case studies now that reflect all the common problems websites have.  Simply examining all these in a conference environment would be far more helpful than listening to yet another SEO guy talk about how he gamed Google’s Algo five years ago.

I don’t want to be too critical of SES and WMW because these are good conferences all things considered. However after attending some UNconferences such as MashupCamp I’m convinced that the UNconference format (or things like Yahoo’s Hack Day) are vastly superior to the old standard where speakers, often with less experience than many in the audience, struggle to speak clearly and make with their weak powerpoint presentations relevant.

UNconferences, like Startup Camp in a few weeks, tend to unleash the power of the audience and ironically the lack of structure creates far more cohesive sessions. I think this is because your brain goes into active vs passive mode.

So Danny after you make your deserved big bucks back at SES over the next year, how about shaking things up for 2007?

Iraq Death Study indicates a staggering new death toll but needs clarification

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Here’s an excellent summary of the very alarming new medical study on Iraq War deaths by the BBC’s Paul Reynolds. This study indicates that some 655,000 *more* people have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war than would have died without the war.

The study has really been bothering me because if true it means the toll from the war is far, far greater than even the harshest critics of the US Iraq policies have been suggesting. If true it defies reason even for the most Machiavellian nationalist to suggest that this scale of death is justified under the circumstances. If false it shows a remarkable lack of quality in a scientific, peer reviewed research project.

Reynold’s points out the key aspect of the study that is very confusing and must be reconciled by the researchers:

That supposes a huge failing by the Iraqi health ministry, a failing the report did not hint at, because it said that death certificates were readily available for most of the reported deaths in the households surveyed.

For the study’s conclusion to be valid it seem that the death certificates they say were produced 92% of the time [I’ve also seen 80% ] *were not counted* by the health ministry. This seems highly unlikely. If they were counted and the count reflects much lower numbers (as I think it does – trying to find that out) then the study is internally inconsistent. The study cannot note 92% certificated death among those interviewed and then reject certificates as a good proxy of actual deaths.

I hope Reynolds and others with key contacts are able to follow up on the Iraq report. If true, it’s a horrific finding of great historical significance. If false, it challenges our reliance on this type of high level, academically supervised research in other sectors.

Why this matters: Ironically, many people who hold strongly held beliefs both in favor and against the Iraq war are suggesting “hey, the numbers don’t really matter”. Those supporting the war think that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and collateral damage is something to sweep under the rug. Those against the war seem to feel that USA should pull out without much regard to the fate of Iraq or to the potentially catastrophic civil war that could follow a US withdrawl.

The death toll is hard to review but it is arguably the best measure of the costs of a war. Ignoring death as a key measure is fundamentally immoral.Also, suggestions to make decisions without taking count of the death toll are not only naive and irrational, they dangerously support the status quo of making decisions without enough information. The world is complex and many life and death decisions must be made every second. Precious lives and resources are being deployed daily to build hospitals, fight wars, teach, drill wells, etc.

Sadly, these allocation decisions are almost always made politically and emotionally rather than being rooted in a careful examination of the costs and the benefits of various courses of action. It’s human to make this mistake, but it’s algo tragic, and results in millions of unnecessary deaths, especially due to the lack of rational allocations in favor of health care in developing world.

Update:  This is an outstanding analysis by the Iraq Body Count, an organization very unsympathetic to the war, of why the findings must be viewed with skepticism.  If the Lancet and the study are to maintain credibility I would hope these concerns will be addressed.

Related links:

Iraq Body Count

BBC on Iraq Body Count project counts

Some Iraq Health Ministry Numbers. Lower than the new study would suggest.

USA Today: Iraq Health Ministry told to stop counting deaths in December 2003 but it appears they started again after this controversial decision which came after they were coming up with counts that are consistent with other studies but do not appear to support the huge tolls in the new study.

Prediction: Google will buy Facebook for about 1.1 billion

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Irrational exuberance in the dot com shopping aisles?

No, it’s a chess game and Google’s winning….again.

I’m really starting to understand what seems like irrational exuberance on the part of Google and the major players. A Google aquisition of Facebook would be consistent with what Robert Scoble suggested is happening: Google is building a moat around it’s advertising business.

Steve Ballmer also suggested this notion in his recent BusinessWeek interview, ironically fretting that Google could monopolize the media business. Yikes, Steve would really run out of chairs then?

I can almost hear Ballmer to Schmidt:
“Hey Cowboy, there’s only enough room in this here internet for ONE monopoly you, you, you dirty monopolistic sonofabitch BASTARDS!”

Schmidt to Ballmer:
“HEY! DROP that chair and step AWAY from the Vista Browser!”

Google, with tons of cash to burn and a staggering market cap, has far less to lose in the high stakes internet poker game than Yahoo, Ebay, or even Microsoft. Microsoft is bigger than Google and theoretically richer, but unlike Google Microsoft has yet to figure out good ways to monetize their (improving) search services and (not improving) content services.

Ballmer’s juggling how to preserve his big ticket MS Office and Vista projects. Yahoo’s worried about plunging valuations and people leaving and the fact that a billion represents a lot more to them than it does to Google.   This is almost certainly complicating the Yahoo Facebook negotiations right now.  Ebay’s pretty fat and happy where they are. Meanwhile, Google can focus in laser-like fashion on keeping Google in the driver’s seat with it’s superb contextual advertising monetization.

The best defense is a good offense, so they are buying up properties to increase their control over the advertising space and keep those hundreds of millions of eyeballs out of the hands of MS and Yahoo.

Will this work? I say probably not for similar reasons it was stupid for Yahoo to buy Broadcast.com years ago. Video is junky and won’t monetize well. It’ll be more of an encumbrance to Google’s core competencies than an asset. But … things change, and in the meantime it’s fun to watch this high stakes game of chess unfold.

It’s a show you won’t see on YouTube.

Ballmer on YouTube Google “transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google”

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This is a great interview by Business Week of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer on Web 2.0 valuations and the competitive landscape up at the top of the heap, where Ballmer suggests only companies like MS, Google, Yahoo, and EBAY can even afford to think about doing the billion dollar deals. It’s a key point often lost on those who like to see valuations based more on financials and profits. Ballmer is noting that the competitive landscape can change these values.

But most interesting is this assertion:

The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google. Why? Because basically Google is telling you how much of your ad revenue you get to keep.They better get some competition. Us. Yahoo!. Somebody better break through or you can short all media stocks right now. As long as there are two, you can hold onto media stocks. Google understands that. And that’s one reason why they’re willing to lose money up front.

Fascinating. He’s saying that Google’s trying to *monopolize* the media market. I certainly think there is some truth to this though we are way past the good old days where barriers to entry could let a big, rich, clever company – let’s say Microsoft – really do a good monopoly play on things everybody needed to use with computers. Part of the Google advantage he’s leaving out is that they really do intend to share most of the revenues with the producers and they have become so good at monetizing that, Google could argue reasonably, you’ll make more sharing revenues with Google than building your own advertising networks. My experiences comparing adsense returns to “roll your own ads” are fairly extensive and I can say that it’s very hard to beat adsense returns by creating your own advertising streams *even excluding the potentially huge cost of a sales staff*.

I think the main exception to Adsense as the best choice is what we see at super targeted niche sites like TechCrunch.com where they can charge about 10k monthly for a modest sized graphical advertisment.    Battelle’s Federated Media is hoping to bring this targeting advantage to a broader network of sites but I remain guarded in my optimism that Google’s highly automated and calibrated approaches won’t do a better job than humans do in most advertising spaces.

So, I think Ballmer’s right that competition will help publishers, but Yahoo and MSN sure better strap on the thinking caps and get their contextual advertising networks working much better than they currently work at providing revenue to all of us hard working internet small time publishing people out here.

Also, and this advice to MS and Yahoo is free and will knock Google out of the driver’s seat in a few months:  Launch your contextual ad networks with a 100% revenue share as an incentive for publishers to switch over.    At 43% of Google’s revenue Adsense is a huge factor at Google.

Google may not be evil, but their advertisers often are. Facilitators of illegal ads should be held accountable

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Although I think Google really tries to follow the “don’t be evil” mantra I think it now rings fairly hollow (ha – especially if it’s ringing up a ringtone ad scam at Google Adwords).

The problems are click fraud and downright illegal advertising which is running rampant all over the internet. This is a great set of PPC fraud advertising examples displayed at Google from a Harvard Law researcher, a proverbial drop in the online bucket of fraud.

Google, as the 800 pound gorilla, is the major beneficiary but this is an area that is simply ripe for legislation to prevent the plethora of PPC fraud schemes, ringtone scams, false advertising, and many, many more from polluting the online advertising space.

Why is this such fertile ground? It’s the new and fascinating combination of young users, young advertisers, young and old scammers, anonymity, global reach, and more that make this a complex and growing problem. Google et al are taking a “let the buyer beware” approach which is both evil and ignores the fact that many of the buyers are kids who wouldn’t know a scam from a treasure trove.

Ironically the solution to the scam ads is very simple. One new Law: If you run an advertisement you are responsible for any refunds in the event of a dispute with the advertiser. Make the publisher deal with their friend the advertiser who they are implicitly endorsing by showing the ad. This would clean it up very fast.

PPC fraud solution is not as easy, though I’d consider this:

1) Have teams of objective ombudsman researchers evaluate the fraud component at the different search engines.

2) Engines must refund to each account this average fraud component.

This incentifies the SE’s finding out and killing off the fraudulent clicks quickly, rather than the current lackluster efforts to root out the problems.

Web 2.0 Metrics? Aren’t we still trying to figure out Web 0.1 metrics?

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Jeremy often asks the questions people will be asking next year. Here, Zawodny notes the difficulties as Web 2.0 brings a lot more than pageviews to the browser table and cites this article about how pageviews are problematic as a measure of online success.

There are challenges galore as we move to Web 2.0 analysis. The YouTube deal alone showcases how irrelevant a ‘page view’ may become to full analysis. There, advertisers will probably want a small clip inserted before the video as well as pay per click or aquistion modes of advertising – at least until all advertisers start demanding cost per sale terms.

I think commercial metrics will (must) trend towards firmly establishing costs per sale and/or customer aquisition. At the point where that gets good the advertiser really does not need more detail. Much of the current advertising mis-analysis industry is based on analysis of things that only indirectly lead to sales.

In many cases I’ve been floored by how mathematically unsound so called “objective” conversion studies can be. In Travel and economic development this relates to the fact that those sponsoring the studies typically benefit from high ROI numbers so a cottage industry of “impact inflation” studies and firms has developed that serves the vested interests rather than the taxpayers.

Non commercially focused website metrics are even more complex than commercial, since many bloggers would probably rather be read by a handful of movers and shakers who provide thoughtful commentary than by legions of regular Joes.

A blog read by all G8 world leaders would be about 1000x more influential in terms of changing history than one read by American Idol fans, but would probably have limited commercial value. How do you measure that? Perhaps Yahoo or Google need a “BigWhig Rank” that pulls in personal data and assigns importance to the … person?

Hmmm – they already have been nabbing your search streams so maybe next they’ll take your … soul! I think that is OK with me as long as it’s …. measurable!

Kawasaki on new trends in marketing

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Here is a nice summary of insights from Guy Kawasaki, clever marketing guru, about what young people are doing online and on phone.    Supports the ideas that the future is highly mobile and must be highly “permission based” in it’s marketing.

Won’t it be interesting if the new age of marketing becomes a lot like 1800 style marketing?   There, you’d go to the hardware store or the grocery and ask the retailer to hand you things.    In the new age this is becoming a trip to trusted niche sites (or Costco.com and Wal-Mart?) for information and shopping and then asking the computer to fetch stuff for you and add to your electronic shopping cart.

Blog readers vs writers III – Cicarelli’s fleeting fame

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Even thanks to a highlight by A-list blogger Jeremy of my AOL lawsuit post yesterday it looks like my Cicarelli “test post” is by far the top interest item here at Joe Duck, and it appears this is due to high placement at MSN for the term … Cicarelli.

This little Cicarelli experiment is suggesting to me that the gap between readers and blog writers is much wider than I’d thought, and it may change my approach to blogging.   Perhaps throwing in junk topic posts every so often is a good way to shake up search prominence even for non-junk topics.   Hard to test that but it seems to be happening – presumably as people who come for Cicarelli stay to read about …. Web 2.0 or Global health and welfare?!

But alas at Technorati we see that Cirarelli is down to search term number 9. I fear her fame, and mine, shall be as fleeting as a teenager’s search preferences.

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