Commentary
Just An Online Minute... "It's All About View Time"
- by April 12, 2005
What's he talking about? Well, the fact that the low-hanging fruit, i.e., new consumers flocking to the Web, are more or less there already, and that publishers are fretting over what to do to keep people at their sites longer. But it's not merely the length of time that they're after, it's the quality of that time and the depth, breadth, and scope of their experience that matters. Here, of course, we are talking mostly about consumers who have broadband connections at home; we assume that they have high-speed connections at work.
To find out more about the type and quality of experience people have online, the OPA mounted an Online User Engagement Study in partnership with Northwestern University. The OPA kicks off a multi-city road show soon (the New York event is slated for mid-June), to discuss the results.
"We want to know, how do people describe their experiences on the Web, how do you keep people longer, if they're consuming three pages on average, how do you make it four pages, if they're consuming six pages, how do you make it seven?" Zimbalist asks.
The point, he says, is that publishers and marketers need to know what the quality of the consumer's exposure is, or "What's the level of engagement the user brings to the experience? It's not about eyeballs; it's about quality," Zimbalist exclaims. It's the quality of the exposure and engagement with the viewer that online publishers and portals need to compete with other media on, he explains.
"It's all about view time," he notes in all seriousness, which is to say, that if online publishers expect to get more than a measly 3 percent of major marketers' media dollars, they're going to have to flog the view time, user engagement, and quality of exposure rationales. The Minute bets online media can go toe-to-toe with other media on these points and hold up fairly well. We'll see, won't we?
