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18/01/2015 01:11:55 PM

Measuring the Effectiveness of Internet Advertising

The information a Web site typically gets when a user connects with a site is the IP address of the Internet site that is requesting the page, what page is requested, and at what time.

A.  Measurement Terminology

  Several terms, such as hits, pages, visits, andusers are used in Web audience measurement.

1.  Hitsprovide almost no indication of actual Web traffic. When a user requests a page with four graphical images, it counts as five hits. Thus, by inflating the number of images, a site can quickly pull up its hit count. Thus, hits do not translate into the number of people visiting a site.

2.   Page views are defined as the pages (technically the html files) sent to the requesting site. However, if a downloaded page occupies several screens, there is no indication that the requester examined the entire page.

3.   Visits are the number of occasions on which a user X looked up Y site during Z time. Users are the number of different people visiting X site during Y time.

4.   Unique VisitorsUnique visitors are the number of different “people” visiting a site (a new user is determined from the user’s registration with the site) during a specified period of time.

5.  Web analytic software is measurement software that not only provides information on hits, pages, visits, and users, but also lets the site track audience traffic within the site. A site could determine which pages are popular and expand on them. It is also possible to track the behavior of people as they go through the site, thus providing inferential information on what people find appealing and unappealing.

6.  New Methods. Advertisers are demanding better accountability of Web reach and consumer use. Companies like Arbitron and Net Ratings are starting to generate the type of data advertisers want. The methods rely on tracking the behavior of a sample of “Internet families” and projecting their behavior to a larger universe. The technique is designed to establish more accurate reach numbers. A list of companies providing measurement services is provided on page 587.

B.  Internet Measurement.

Internet users pay for ads in several ways:      

·         Impressions. The number of times a page with an advertiser’s ad isviewed. Unfortunately, this really is only a measure of “hits” to the page. Usually priced in flat fees.

·         Pay-per-click. Basically the same as impressions.

·         Click-throughs.This is the most rigorous measure because user must click on the ad and go directly to the advertiser’s site.

Click Fraud.This is an increasingly difficult problem.  Web advertisers are victimized by bogus visits to ads or Web sites when they are on a pay-per-click program