Are ‘page views’ dead? Internet Inc. debates

Does it make sense to replace page view metrics with engagement-based figures in the online industry?

Earlier this month, Nielsen//NetRatings announced that page impressions or page views would no longer be its primary metric for measurement of websites. It has moved to an ‘engagement’ metric, where the ‘total minutes’ spent by a user and the number of unique users (who visit at least once a month) on a website will be key to determining its popularity.

As the way we interact with the web is changing, and technology makes it easier for users to have access to multimedia content on a single web page, are page views still relevant?

AJAX (asynchronous Javascript and XML) is a web browser technology that can update content on a web page automatically without the user having to refresh it. Naturally, page view figures are inadequate for websites that rely heavily on AJAX – a growing breed. Streaming is another challenge. Video, audio or dynamic text can also be viewed multiple times without moving from the page. Therefore, do page views really give the advertiser a clear picture of how engaging a website is? This question is a hotly debated one, even in the US, where most research agencies still quote page impressions.

Are ‘page views’ dead? Internet Inc. debates

Neville Taraporewalla

In India, most publishers rely on page views to assert their ranking and reach. It is these figures that are pitched to advertisers as well. However, this puts niche websites at a disadvantage as they do not have mass appeal – here, the ability of the site to engage its visitors is more important than page views.

The question is whether, in a market where metrics themselves are hard to come by, Indian websites are ready to move to these metrics.

Neville Taraporewalla, CEO and online media director (APAC), Publicitas Digital India, feels that page views are still relevant. “(Page views) convey the interest of the visitor in the content on the website, so we cannot entirely do away with them. We cannot ignore a newspaper that is selling one million copies, but we can also talk about the time spent on reading it. However, engagement metrics will play a key role to showcase that branding does work on the Internet.”

Manish Agarwal

Further, Indian websites are still subject to external factors such as the level of Internet penetration and connectivity. According to Manish Agarwal, vice-president, marketing, Rediff.com, “The time spent on a site as a figure makes more sense in evolved markets where the broadband penetration is deeper. In India, the time spent only reflects the Internet connection of a user, rather than engagement. Further, advertisers are more concerned about whether websites are delivering them the desired impressions than page views or time spent.” Agarwal is of the opinion that unique users are a better yardstick across sites.

For an e-commerce site like eBay India, for instance, engagement does matter. Says Rathin Lahiri, chief marketing officer at eBay India, “There are far richer metrics than page views, which make more sense for publishers. For a site like eBay, the number of visitors, ratio of conversion and time spent are more important. Also, advertisers look at the ‘quality’ of traffic on a website, along with the quantity.”

Similarly, for a search engine, page views are a more important figure than time spent, which may vary widely. In fact, as a result of Nielsen’s new ratings, Google slipped to fifth position from the top two, in terms of ‘total minutes’, but still led the way in ‘unique audience’ with 110 million unique visitors in May 2007 in the US. As Shailesh Rao, managing director at Google India, puts it, “One has to be careful with metrics. It all depends on the website being referred to. For a site like Google, time spent is not very relevant.”

Indeed, page views and time spent on a website are the function of many factors – the design of the website, its navigation, content and target audience. As such, it would not be fair to compare two websites that belong to different categories. Unique users are usually free of such conditions and can prove to be a good parameter for comparison, indicating the growth of a website.

However, some of these terms themselves are not clearly defined, depending on the type of website and the context. Ratish Nair, CEO of Interactive Avenues, thinks that suddenly shifting metrics may not be a good idea in a market where advertisers are still used to measuring page impressions. “While unique visitors and time spent are qualitative measures, one has to first define what engagement is and how one measures it. If it is only qualitative, it will be open to different interpretations,” he adds.

While the Indian online industry may not be ready to change its measurement techniques altogether, there is a need for a more holistic look at the popularity of a website, rather than defining it by any single metric.

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