New Metrics for New Media

Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

2007
NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

New technologies
have emerged.
Has your web analytics solution kept up?

Market Drivers + Industry Trends

Media and advertising companies operate in a highly

competitive environment, where the online channel
is becoming increasingly more important in the
battle for customer loyalty and advertising revenue.
Today, people are using the web to collaborate and share information online in
previously unavailable ways. This shift in behavior, coined ‘Web 2.0,’ spans the use of
new technologies such as RSS feeds, podcasts, streaming video, as well as new types of
content like social networking web sites.

In adapting to this changing marketplace, publishers and content editors now have
an opportunity to reach an entirely different and highly engaged audience. However,
guessing what drives online visitor behavior or loyalty is not a viable option. In
optimizing the online channel, you need to act objectively and base your decisions on
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that support your specific business goals. This
data-driven approach, enabled by web analytics, plays a central role in helping media
and advertising companies focus their efforts and achieve success online.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 2

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

In this book, we will discuss the latest industry trends, highlight relevant KPIs, and
provide examples of leading-edge companies leveraging an analytical approach to
take advantage of this changing landscape.

Rapid adoption of Web 2.0 technologies is

affecting – even transforming – media creation,
distribution and consumption. This change in
technology calls for new metrics.
Traditionally, media companies have tracked and analyzed the consumption of
online media by counting page views, unique visitors and visits per visitor. However,
the recent adoption of new technologies have rendered traditional web analytics
inadequate at best.

Streaming Media. Recent trends dictate the inclusion of streaming video to your
marketing mix to provide more engaging content to your online visitors. eMarketer
projects that the number of online video viewers in the US alone will rise from
114 million in 2006 to 183 million in 2011.1 There are no signs of a slow down for the
staggering growth in streaming media usage.

Streaming Media Player Unique Users (Thousands)2

US Streaming Media Unique Users, by Player, November 2005-January 2007 (thousands
and % increase vs. prior year)
November January 2006 November January 2007 % Change
2005 2006

Windows Media Player 68,758 71,112 71,705 72,510 2.0%

RealPlayer 26,262 28,687 30,566 31,309 9.1%
Itunes 13,922 18,568 23,460 27,396 47.5%
Apple QuickTime 11,771 12,817 12,670 13,934 8.7%
Source: Nielsen/Netratings, February 2007,;
WebSiteOptimization.com, February 2007
www.eMarketer.com

Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Despite today’s perceived low adoption rate
of RSS, a recent Prospero Technologies survey found that 57% of US businesses
surveyed are currently syndicating content via RSS feeds.3 Currently, high RSS
deployment rates do exist in the publishing sector because syndicated content can

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 3

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

help maintain or augment readership. Additionally, RSS users are heavier consumers
of online media than are traditional online users, and thus represent a prime
demographic for online media publishers.

Current and Planned Deployment of RSS

Content Published via RSS

'

!" Plan to Publish Content via RSS during the next 12 months

!% No Plans to Publish Content via RSS

Mobile Devices. Mobile phones have become the world’s most ubiquitous mass
market device leading to exponential growth in mobile content services and data
usage. To capitalize on this growing trend, many leading media and entertainment
companies are creating mobile-user specific sites to enable easy access to news
and content via wireless phones. In fact, in areas such as social networking sites,
the mobile phone is becoming the predominant means by which people access the
Internet. Mobile social networking site users will climb from 14 million in 2007 to 600
million in 2012.4

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 4

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

New Technologies Call for New Metrics

Given the recent shift away from ad hoc analysis

of data toward a web analytics business process
driven in part by KPIs, Visual Sciences® strongly
recommends that online media and advertising
companies consider KPIs as the basis for
reporting against stated business goals.
While web analytics metrics provide a foundation, KPIs take this reporting a step
further by putting the numbers in context. KPIs are ratios that take volumes out
of the picture, clarifying for business managers how key ratios change over time.
Some of the fundamental KPIs that Visual Sciences recommends for media and
content sites include:

Average Page Views per Visit to track depth of engagement for all visitors.
More engaged visitors will view more pages in a given visit or session. If possible,
consider tracking average ad unit impressions per visit and average stream views
per visit as separate indicators.

Average Cost and Average Revenue per Visit to keep an eye on the bottom line.
In general you can make these calculations using close but best-guess estimates
of your costs and CPM-based revenues; exact monetization is less important
than watching the general trend of costs versus revenue.

Percentage of High, Medium and Low Frequency Visitors to track how your
audience distributes into well-engaged, moderately-engaged and poorly-
engaged visitor segments. Based on your content updates, consider using “daily”
for high frequency, “at least three times a week” for medium frequency and “less
than once a week” for low frequency.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 5

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

Ratio of New to Returning Visitors to have a quick indicator of the efficacy of

your acquisition and retention activities. Numbers under 1.00 indicate a greater
number of returning visitors than new visitors; numbers over 1.00 indicate the
opposite. In general, this calculation for media properties is well under 1.00,
and it is often closer to 0.50 or 0.30 at the most popular sports and
entertainment sites.

For those companies actively tracking streaming media content and mobile site
viewing, a few additional KPIs become relevant:

Best Practices in KPI Reporting

Ratio of Stream Views to Page Views to actively monitor the popularity of
streaming content compared to more traditional page views. Those sites
deploying mobile content may want to track a similar ratio of mobile page views
to page views to watch the adoption and use of mobile content.

Percent Complete Stream Views to track whether visitors are watching the
entirety of streams and to keep an eye out for delivery performance issues. This
is essentially when advertising units or brand messages are being appended
to streams. Often a sudden decrease in “completed stream views” indicates a
delivery issue, not a content issue.

Average Mobile Page Views per Visit to track the usage of content via mobile
platforms, watching for increasing trends and to guide the development and
deployment of additional mobile content.

This Last % % of
Key Performance Indicator Change Target
Period Period Change Goal
Page Views per Visit 2.5 1.6 — 56% 5 50%

Average Cost per Visit $60 $60 . 0% $30 50%

Percent of High Frequency Visitors 27% 27% 0% 35% 77%

Ratio of New to Returning Visitors 0.34 0.28 — 21% 0.30 113%

Ratio of Stream Views to Page Views 0.90 0.90 0% 1.0 90%

Percent Complete Stream Views 48% 35% — 37% 55% 87%

Average Mobile Page Views per Visit 2.5 1.6 — 56% 5 50%

Key Performance Indicators are meant to be presented in the context of change over time.
The figure above highlights a handful of best practices for KPI reporting.5

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 6

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

The Four Keys

to Online Success.
For Media & Content Web Sites

The goal for most businesses is to grow their

company’s overall revenue. As a marketer for
an online media or content web site, there are
four key areas of focus that will help you
maximize your contribution to this goal. While
most of the recommendations discussed in this
section pertain to running a successful business
both online and offline, those with an online
presence have the added benefit of being able
to measure, monitor and optimize their sites
based on comprehensive, real-time information.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 7

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

1. Increase Online Advertising Revenue

Advertisements – whether placed inside streaming video
content or directly on a page on your site – are the primary
source of revenue for the majority of media and content sites.
Leveraging streaming audio and video to deliver content calls for new metrics to
help marketers identify the most compelling content, enabling greater revenue
generation for themselves and their advertisers. Hence it is imperative to quantify
audience levels and their interaction with streaming audio and video content served
on your own web site, or distributed to an external web site, via Windows Media
Player, QuickTime or RealPlayer.

Here are a few emerging KPIs to observe:

Ratio of Stream Views to Page Views

Average Number of Streams Viewed per Visit

Percent Complete Stream Views

Percent “Stream Viewers” (e.g., stream viewers by visitor / all visitors)

Stream View to Conversion Rate (e.g., streams viewed to subscription rate)

Growth in Online Advertising Revenue ($Billions)6

US Online Viewers as a Percent of Internet Users, 2006-2011

www.eMarketer.com

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 8

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

One Visual Sciences client, a leading online video network, generates revenue
from its advertisers to enable free distribution of content to its visitors. Using
Visual Sciences’s HBX™ Analytics, the client is able to provide audience metrics for
media streams to advertisers located on their web pages instead of only providing
impression counts. They also send out scheduled reports to dozens of advertisers
containing metrics and KPIs on the percentage of streams that were completed and
how long they were viewed.

Leveraging these new metrics, the client is able to objectively decide on where
to place ads, how frequently to show ads within the videos and have the data to
persuade advertisers to expand from on-air only to also include online properties.

2. Provide Fresh and Compelling Content

Site “stickiness” is one of the most important success criteria
for content sites. Attaining a high percentage of repeat
visitors who are getting the information they need during
each visit separates successful content sites from the masses.
One surefire way to entice visitors to keep returning to your site is to serve
information that is fresh, targeted and relevant. Focusing on the following KPIs will
help optimize your site for stickiness:

Percent of Low / Medium / High Click Depth Visits

Time Spent Per Visit

Average Page Views per Visit

Average Number of Streams Viewed Per Visit

Percent of Complete Streams Viewed

Ratio of New to Returning Visitors

Newspapers are witnessing the switch from the traditional newsroom to online
operations. With the competition’s site just a click away, online newspapers need
to quickly provide customers with exactly what they are looking for. HBX Analytics
allows media sites to easily analyze how popular specific content is to ensure the
most relevant and compelling stories are placed in the most prominent positions.
They also overlay these statistics directly on top of their web pages to quickly

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 9

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

identify navigation trends between different sections of content. Online newspapers,

such as Guardian Newspapers in the U.K., leverage HBX Analytics to create on-
demand segments of their most loyal visitors, enabling them to understand the most
valuable site content and advertisements.

Using analytics to deliver the most compelling information doesn’t just apply to your
web site’s editorial content. Multimedia reports are available in HBX Analytics to
enable you to track the popularity of video streams, RSS feeds, Podcasts, and Flash
ads. Broadcasting companies rely on this information to help promote their show
lineup, build hype online and ultimately grow the broadcast audience. In addition,
companies that provide online training videos for their employees are able to
measure whether each video is being viewed in its entirety.

Understanding how your visitors interact with your site will enable you to provide
them with the content they are interested in and keep them coming back for more.

3. Increase Your Company’s Reach

In addition to delivering content that is fresh and compelling,
you need to make it easily accessible to all of your visitors.
Equipped with web-enabled wireless phones, visitors can
now access your site anytime, anywhere.
Local television and cable stations are increasingly packaging news broadcasts as
downloadable podcasts, streaming web video and/or mobile phone video, increasing
their appeal for mobile users.

With HBX Analytics, marketers can get rich information about visitors who access
their HTML and WML web sites through mobile devices. This includes segmenting
mobile audiences to better understand their unique navigational behavior and
content preferences. Detailed reporting is also provided on the mobile devices used
by visitors, including brands, models and service providers. These new tracking
capabilities allow publishers and editors to optimize content for specific devices or
groups of people accessing your site.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 10

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

Analyzing the following KPIs will help you understand your effectiveness at
extending your reach to the growing mobile demographic:

Percent mobile visitor sessions (e.g. mobile visits / all visits)

Average duration of mobile sessions

Average Mobile Page Views per Visit

SignOnSanDiego.com, the online arm of The San Diego Union-Tribune, serves as a

good example of a company taking advantage of new technology trends to extend
their reach online. SignOnSanDiego.com has been formatted to be accessible from
web-enabled wireless phones and handheld or portable devices.

“As our growth rate relative to the traditional paper

continues to climb, we are making significant investments
in things like streaming audio and video. HBX Analytics
is the only solution that will allow us to track the
performance of these new initiatives, including the
behavior of the growing mobile device user segment.”
Chris Jennewein, VP, Internet Operations
SignOnSanDiego.com

Not only are they offering RSS feeds of their online editorial, they are also offering
RSS feeds of news sections from the actual newspaper. The content found on
SignOnSanDiego.com is also broadcast via blogs and the company has launched
a new internet radio station. As a result, SignOnSanDiego.com is able to generate
more revenue through the increased advertising inventory that arises by utilizing
these new channels.

Another Visual Sciences client uses partners such as MySpace.com to boost the
distribution of its unique live broadcasts to a much larger audience than it could
reach on its own. The server side media reports available in HBX Analytics allow the
client to track content delivered beyond the walls of its own web site.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 11

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

4. Increase Registrations and Subscriptions

Increasing subscriptions is a popular goal for many media
and lead generation web sites. Subscriptions help generate
revenue and build up your prospect list.
They also enable subscribers to become part of a community that receives highly
relevant information, increasing satisfaction levels and their propensity to return to
your site. In order to increase subscriptions you should monitor the following KPIs:

Percent paid subscribers (e.g. paid subscribers / all subscribers)

Subscription conversion rate
By continually optimizing your registration form, you can guarantee an immediate
increase in the number of new subscribers. HBX Analytics can help easily identify
fields where visitors drop out, pages that cause issues for visitors and where your
visitors exited your site.

You can easily determine what fields visitors are using when they stop completing
your form and then decide if these high abandonment fields are important enough
to warrant inclusion on your sign-up process. For instance, do you need to know
the person’s job title or phone number
before allowing them to view your video
content, and if so, are you leveraging
this information for further marketing
initiatives?

A leading provider of web meeting

applications, selected HBX Analytics to
improve its online marketing programs
and generate more leads for its sales

Many Visual Sciences customers

leverage the funnel analysis reporting
provided by HBX Analytics to analyze
and optimize their registration forms.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 12

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

force. The client offers a unique range of specialized web meeting applications which
it markets with a 14-day free trial. The client has been able to increase conversions
for this program by conducting real-time A/B testing techniques with HBX Analytics,
allowing it to compare the effectiveness of different design and promotional elements.

Many online video consumers are willing to sign up for premium services including
participation in online panels, advanced contest entries, exclusive sneak peeks and
breaking news. The funnel analysis reports in HBX Analytics help clients determine
how many visitors progress from one level to the next on the registration form and
easily target areas that are in need of improvement. HBX Active Segmentation allows
them to clearly differentiate behavior between subscribers and non-subscribers to
understand the difference in site navigation and optimize its site content to attract
more people to sign up.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 13

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

The Visual Sciences

Difference
New technologies such as streaming media, Ajax, RSS
feeds, and web-enabled mobile phones are becoming more
pervasive and are transforming the way media companies
and consumers are interacting with each other and online.
These new technologies call for new ways to measure,
optimize, and monetize online activity.
As a recognized innovator in the web analytics industry, Visual Sciences offers
the most comprehensive multimedia analytics solution to meet these new market
requirements. HBX Analytics expands the dimensions of analysis beyond the
tracking of traditional HTML content to include Web 2.0 technologies and content.

Limited web analytics for streaming media and mobile web browsers have been
available for some time, but those solutions have always been clumsy, highly
customized, one-off solutions, according to Bill Gassman, research director at
Gartner Research.

“By making this a standard feature, Visual Sciences is

recognizing that streaming media is becoming an important
part of media organizations.”7
HBX Analytics is the first web analytics solution to provide comprehensive real-
time tracking of streaming media across both client and server-side channels. It’s
KPI-driven approach has been further enhanced by these expanded capabilities.
With HBX Analytics, marketers are now able to capitalize on fast-growing mediums,
analyze the activity of an entirely new set of visitor demographics, and gain a
comprehensive view into visitor behavior.

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 14

NEW METRICS FOR NEW MEDIA
Tips for Tracking the Latest Technologies

About Visual Sciences, Inc.

Founded in 1996, Visual Sciences, Inc. (formerly known as WebSideStory, Inc.)
(NASDAQ: VSCN) is a leading provider of real-time analytics applications. The
company’s analytics applications, based on its patent pending on-demand service
and software platform, enable fast and detailed analytics on large volumes of
streaming and stored data. Approximately 1,600 enterprises worldwide rely on the
answers delivered by these applications to provide them with actionable intelligence
to optimize their business operations. The company provides real-time analytics
applications for web sites, contact centers, retail points-of-sale, messaging systems
and the intelligence community. In addition, the company’s line of analytics-driven
offerings leverages its analytics technology to automatically optimize Web sites and
related marketing applications. Visual Sciences is headquartered in San Diego, Calif.,
and has East Coast offices in Herndon, Virginia and a European headquarters in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For more information, contact Visual Sciences. Voice:
858.546.0040. Fax: 858.546.0480. Address: 10182 Telesis Court, 6th Floor, San Diego,
CA 92121. Web site: www.visualsciences.com.

Leading Media and Content Companies Rely on Visual Sciences

1 eMarketer, August 2007

2 Streaming Media Players: Unique User Trends, Nielsen//NetRatings, February, 2007

3 Prospero Technologies, LLC,”2007 Social Media Survey”, October 2007

4 Juniper Research, Mobile User Generated Content: Social Networking, Dating and Personal Content Delivery, August 2007.

5 Eric Peterson, www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

6 eMarketer, August 2007

7 Streaming Media Comes to the Fore, ClickZ, April 5, 2006

© 2007 | Visual Sciences® www.visualsciences.com | 15

Corporate Headquarters EMEA Headquarters UK Headquarters
10182 Telesis Court Neptunusstraat 23 62-65 Chandos Place
San Diego, CA 92121 2132 JA Hoofddorp Covent Garden
[P] 858.546.0040 [P] +31 (0) 23.554.10.10 London, WC2N 4LP
[F] 858.546.0480 [F] +31 (0) 23.554.10.11 [P] +44 (0) 207.917.6280
www.visualsciences.com www.visualsciences.com/nl [F] +44 (0) 207.917.6281
www.visualsciences.com/uk