Measures Of Success For Cyberspace

Measures of Success for Cyberspace
By Katie Delahaye Paine, President, KDPaine & Partners April 4, 2002

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME
In 1952 Fortune’s then managing editor Ralph D. Paine gave a speech to the Ad Club of St. Louis in which he stated, “Unless television executives can figure out a way to prove its effectiveness, it will not survive...” Shortly afterthat speech, The Advertising Research Foundation blessed Arthur Nielsen’s concept for measurement of television audience and the Nielsen Ratings became a standard unit of measurement for television advertisers. So it was not surprising that in the early days of the Internet, fearing that without adequate measurement to justify the expenditures, the net might not survive, the market cried out for a“Nielsen of the Internet.” Today, trillions of hits, millions of page views, and thousands of speeches later, there still isn’t a “Nielsen of the Internet” and the one organization that came closest to it is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. There are some very good reasons why we don’t have the same sort of standards that are used in other media. The first is that the Internet is not a medium liketelevision. It is a marketplace where people buy and sell things, and one of those things may be advertising, but it is just as likely to be goods, services and information. A better analogy is that the Internet is, in fact, part of the infrastructure like the phone company or the utility company. No one justifies their telephone system or the need for electricity. They accept it as part of doingbusiness. So too, the Internet is an integral part of doing business. Secondly, even for the small percentage of web sites that base their business on an advertising model, television is the wrong analogy. When television began, it was tightly controlled by government licenses and by the three networks. They essentially had 24 hours of airtime a day to sell. As we who are trying to measure itwell know, the Internet is a free-for-all. Not enough banner space on one site? Just add more pages, change the banners more frequently – all for pennies, rather than the millions or dollars that it costs to add another network. The third major difference between those early days and today is that the Internet has brought about a revolution in marketing far beyond the scope that even the most forwardthinking of us might have imagined. I don’t use the term “revolution” lightly. It is a remarkably precise term. Because, in truth, consumers are revolting against, and seizing power from, the marketers. Mitch Kapor has described the Internet as the “ultimate democratic society - a truly chaotic universe.” It represents the unleashed raw will of millions of consumers. As The Cluetrain Manifestoclearly points out, the consumers are in control and they’re going to let YOU know what they think by changing their behavior.

THE CHALLENGES:
The biggest challenge to a researcher on the web is the sheer enormity of the task. There are now 3 billion web pages in existence, some 80,000 newsgroups and approximately 15,000 editors and reporters writing for online publications. The good news isthat technology can help you find your way through this vast maze and there are a number of organizations out there that will be happy to assist you in gathering your data. The bad news is that chances are the data you gather will have major gaps in it and may be of questionable validity. Organizations like SRDS and Media Metrix are making concerted efforts to audit and verify traffic rates andprovide more accurate data on things like page views, hits and visits. However, there are still gaps. Publications that require subscribers to log on will not be included in most web searches. Even the most comprehensive search firms can only gather about 60-80% of what you want. That contrasts sharply with print clipping services that return about 85%.

Finally, the resources required can be...