Tracking Relevant Stats in a Web 2.0 World

Submitted by kpaul.mallasch on Mon, 10/09/2006 - 7:13pm.

Jeremy Zowozdney had a great post today (Hit Counter 2.0, or "Web 2.0 Metrics") that talks about the history of the 'hit counter' (oh how far we've come!) and how things will change as AJAX features (that usually don't reload a 'page') might be tracked. What info do we want to give advertisers? Big media has more money to throw at things like Overture (or whatever it's called this month), but that isn't necessarily the best thing. I think one of my strengths for local advertisers could be the fact that I give them more meaningful stats - or training on how to interpret the numbers?

Zaeodny also pointed out a post at Evhead (Pageviews are Obsolete) that is great reading. Not a lot of answers yet perhaps, but the questions are being asked.

Ev wrote:

In summary, there's no easy solution. There's a big opportunity (though very tough job) for someone to come up with a meaningful metric that weighs a bunch of factors. But no matter what, there will come a time when no one who wants to be taken seriously will talk about their web traffic in terms of "pageviews" any more than one would brag about their "hits" today.

Indeed. Not so much for the people that design the software or system, but those publishers that embrace the new and give it to advertisers.

I still remember many moons ago, after listening to a speech on how 'rich media' ads were the wave of the future at some Gannett corporate meeting, how I asked what they thought of Google Adsense. They blew it off as something not that big a deal.

Will they do it again?

Anyone out there using anything unique to track value of your content site to visitors?