Category Archives: metrics

06.19.15
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Content metrics aren’t bad, measuring the wrong things is bad

My friend George Brock has taken aim at Trinity Mirror‘s Newsroom 3.1 plan on The Conversation:

Quite apart from the limp, tired name of “Newsroom 3.1”, the idea of trying to improve performance with detailed numbers of “hit rates” or “impact ratings” has been tried and doesn’t work.

Later he adds:

One way of helping – rather than scaring – Trinity Mirror journalists might be to concentrate on demonstrating that what they produce is valued by people in Birmingham and Coventry. Simple clicks are evidence of passing interest or curiosity, not of a piece of journalism being valued.

Ouch. I agree with George that volume numbers of alone – clicks and even unique users – aren’t going to help us grow our audiences.

Like Trinity Mirror, Gannett, where I work as an executive editor, has also been training our journalists on how to use metrics. It is part of a larger strategy to be more audience focused. But fortunately, the training goes beyond volume metrics to include engagement and loyalty metrics. The main question that we are trying to answer is how do we produce something that is so valuable to our communities that they will pay for it? Just this week, I pointed out to one of my staff that her story wasn’t just getting a lot of views or clicks, but that it also was having higher than average engagement. People were spending time with her story.

Suw and I often say in our training and consulting that metrics aren’t bad but be very careful about what you are measuring because you might end up optimising for the wrong thing. Suw says that we often fail to measure what is important because we focus on measuring what is easy.

Measuring impact and what what our audiences value is challenging, but we have to do it. And we have to get smarter in how we do it.

11.03.10
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iPad expectations for content companies coming down to earth

I was always sceptical that the iPad would dramatically change the economics of digital content. Well, more accurately, I called content execs “delusional”. We’ve now got a few months of data under our belts, and Brian Morrissey of AdWeek comes to many of the same conclusions that I did after looking at some of the early apps and pricing strategies:

Despite the optimism that greeted the new device, there is a danger that publishers are squandering an opportunity with clunky apps, bad pricing strategies and unsustainable ad tactics.

Yes, and unlike when I wrote the post back in April, we now have months of user data, interviews and sales figures.

The first month, Wired sold more copies on the iPad than in print. After that promising first month, the designer was described as a cross between Jesus and Pele. There was lot of messianic talk around the iPad. I still love the line from Mathias Döpfner, head of Germany’s Axel Springer, who said:

Sit down once a day and pray to thank Steve Jobs that he is saving the publishing industry.

I wanted to see what the sales were after a few months, after the early adopters that read Wired had a chance to use it and decide whether static images of print pages was the digital experience that they wanted.

Wired: 100,000 iPad downloads for June; July, August, September averaged 30,300.

It looks like the early enthusiasm is cooling. iPad sales from other titles are even less impressive. When I listened to the magazine and newspaper industry talk about the iPad, they talked about how close it approximated the paper experience. As a digital consumer, I said it then and I will say it again: I don’t want a paper experience. Frankly, on a recent flight, I was frustrated trying to wrestle my print FT into submission in an economy seat. I can’t search it. I can’t flick between sections. I have no problem reading on a screen. I want to save and share what I read. As designer Khoi Vinh says in AdWeek:

The magazine app experience, according to Vinh, is akin to a “remote, suburban cul-de-sac” while the digital world is moving to a real-time chaotic city.

In a lot of ways, publishers thought that the iPad was the future that could take them back to the past of the fat profits of the print era. It doesn’t look like it’s as simple as replicating the print experience and waiting for the money.

It never was going to be that simple, and it’s a bit disappointing that the leaders in the industry believed a single device was going to overturn years of experience and expectation from the web. In the end, it just reinforces that we’re in need of a fundamental rethink. There is no magic technology that will transform print into digital success. Think digitally and commercially and then we can start building sustainable digital businesses.

06.23.10
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The Click-Through That May Be Hurting Your Brand – Advertising Age – DigitalNext

Kevin: An interesting article on Advertising Age about click through rates. One thing that's important beyond the narrow focus on this article is that sometimes the easiest to measure statistics aren't necessarily the most important statistics. Indeed, it might say something just about that ease of measurement rather than its relevance. The take-away from this research: "While click-through rates showed a strong positive correlation with interaction rates and brand favorability, only a minor positive correlation could be demonstrated between CTR and purchase intent. "