US: News sites down in "time spent," but is "time spent" what we should be measuring?
Posted by Sarah Schewe on June 24, 2008 at 7:47 AM
Newspaper websites saw the average time spent per person on their sites dwindle in May year-over-year comparisons.
The Wall Street Journal online fell to about 8-and-a-half minutes last month, from 15 in May 2007. Boston.com's average time spent per visitor dropped to 9 minutes and 39 seconds versus more than 18 minutes in May '07. And the website of the Chicago Tribune is down to about 8 and half minutes -- from 17 minutes a year ago.
There were some notable exceptions: the average time per person more than doubled at the Detroit Free Press website to almost 13 minutes. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site also doubled from about seven minutes in May 2007 to more than 15 minutes in May 2008.
You can view more complete results of the May Nielsen numbers here.
Nielsen Online measures the average time spent per person over the course of month (a change from their previous measure of page views), however, not all agree that this is the best metric for assessing news sites.
Primarily, because "time spent" doesn't gauge engagement. "Anybody who browses with several open tabs, or walked away from their computer knows how big a mistake it would be to assume that, just because the website is open, someone is actually paying attention," said Bryan Eisenberg, an online marketing and marketing analytics expert.
Limor Peer, research director of the Readership Institute, wrote about the conundrum in May.
"In our recent work with teens and young adults we heard many times that they go to news sites to get the news. That's it. They're not interested in spending time on these sites doing anything else. If that's the case...newspaper sites are at a disadvantage compared to many other sites when it comes to how much time people spend on them," explains Peer. "Shouldn't these sites be measured in terms of how well they serve their audience? How quickly people can find what they're looking for? How well they lay out issues, or provide added value to the news of the day with digests, timelines, maps, data banks, etc.? Just because you can measure time spent...doesn't mean you should, or that you only rely on that measurement. Newspaper sites are in essence trying to compete in a race that is not their own, and risk handicapping themselves by letting others define them."
Sources: Editor & Publisher, Readership Institute
The Wall Street Journal online fell to about 8-and-a-half minutes last month, from 15 in May 2007. Boston.com's average time spent per visitor dropped to 9 minutes and 39 seconds versus more than 18 minutes in May '07. And the website of the Chicago Tribune is down to about 8 and half minutes -- from 17 minutes a year ago.
There were some notable exceptions: the average time per person more than doubled at the Detroit Free Press website to almost 13 minutes. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site also doubled from about seven minutes in May 2007 to more than 15 minutes in May 2008.
You can view more complete results of the May Nielsen numbers here.
Nielsen Online measures the average time spent per person over the course of month (a change from their previous measure of page views), however, not all agree that this is the best metric for assessing news sites.
Primarily, because "time spent" doesn't gauge engagement. "Anybody who browses with several open tabs, or walked away from their computer knows how big a mistake it would be to assume that, just because the website is open, someone is actually paying attention," said Bryan Eisenberg, an online marketing and marketing analytics expert.
Limor Peer, research director of the Readership Institute, wrote about the conundrum in May.
"In our recent work with teens and young adults we heard many times that they go to news sites to get the news. That's it. They're not interested in spending time on these sites doing anything else. If that's the case...newspaper sites are at a disadvantage compared to many other sites when it comes to how much time people spend on them," explains Peer. "Shouldn't these sites be measured in terms of how well they serve their audience? How quickly people can find what they're looking for? How well they lay out issues, or provide added value to the news of the day with digests, timelines, maps, data banks, etc.? Just because you can measure time spent...doesn't mean you should, or that you only rely on that measurement. Newspaper sites are in essence trying to compete in a race that is not their own, and risk handicapping themselves by letting others define them."
Sources: Editor & Publisher, Readership Institute
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