My question to Grok readers is:
Will Amazon’s infamous pressure-cooker culture eventually overtake all the innovations and friendliness of Zappos’s culture? Or, is the alliance a perfect shot-in-the-arm for both groups?  Will Zappos start bundling books with patent leather pumps?

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, do you think that might have some rather profound effects on Domino’s marketing efforts?  Think you’ll be eating at Domino’s anytime soon?

What’s interesting is that the basic principle behind this was predicted not by some far-seeing futurist working in the technology field, but by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak.

Gen. Krulak coined the term “strategic corporal” to refer to the possible strategic foreign policy impact of actions taken by individual Marines in an age of universal media coverage and counter-insurgency warfare:

“In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well. His actions, therefore, will directly impact the outcome of the larger operation; and he will become, as the title of this article suggests – the Strategic Corporal.”

Since the publication of Gen Krulak’s article in 1999, the rise of cell phone video cameras, YouTube, and twitter have further amplified the potential impact of local, tactical actions of seemingly “lower-level” or front-line individuals.

Granted, minimum wage workers operate in a far less dramatic and less-threatening arena than Marines, but the above video offers a stark example of the far reaching strategic impact of their actions.

The Marine Corps response to this has always been to recruit the very best individuals possible and to push decision-making and responsibility as far down the chain of command as possible. Many successful businesses take a similar approach with their front-line workers.  And the results pay-off when the great actions of individual employees hit the social media echo chamber.

What is (or what will be) your organization’s response?

Of course, there have always been some level-headed voices of dissent, but it was still interesting to read this bit of research on the effectiveness of fast-forwarded / DVR-ed ads.

Turns out that viewers have to pay attention to their TV Screens in order to fast forward through ads.  A real shocker that one, but hey, that means the viewer is actually seeing the ad (rather than running to the fridge for a snack) and that, properly formatted, these fast-forwarded ads can still influence viewers.

The trick was simply to keep the important brand images and information in the center of the screen as the task-focused fast-forwarding viewer was unlikely to see anything else.

So does this have anything to do with Websites?

Well, keep in mind that most Web visitors are also task-focused and unlikely to pay much attention to peripheral information.  So keep your important information, calls-to-action, and controls in the center window, otherwise, visitors may not see them in their “fast-forward” movement through your site.

PS Don’t forget to join us for our Free Webinar with guest Jim Sterne: 2009 is Our Year to Shine. Even if you can’t attend, please register to be notified when the play back is available.

*Custom reports* enable customers to create their own reports with the metrics they want to compare organized in the way they want to see it. You no longer have to look at the standard reports and using drag and drop you choose the data you want to analyze on your report. Avinash likes to calls these “micro-ecosystems.” The entire company can get one report with just the custom metrics the key groups in your organizations care about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGgl137×3Yw

*Advanced segmentation* enables customers to isolate and analyze unlimited subsets of their traffic. They can select from predefined custom segments such as “Paid Traffic” and “Visits with Conversions,” or create their own segments with a flexible, easy-to-use drag and drop segment builder. As you can see in the screenshot below you can see the “values” of your segments on the fly. Never look at data in aggregate again. The key to success in online marketing and web analytics has always been segmentation. Avinash hopes this is the death to standard reports. This will allow you to also do deep dives into the history, without changing tags, no touching code and no popups and just work through this one page feature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*The application programming interface (API)*, currently in private beta, enables developers to access all of their Google Analytics data and export it for any type of use. Possible uses include integrating information into other data sources, building custom visualizations or interfaces, and conducting offline analysis.

*The updated interface* that was released yesterday for everyone, includes several new features in the administrative interface and a cleaner reporting screen that highlights tools for changing the way reports display data. A new navigation, administrators’ ability to rename accounts and profiles, and account and profile locater functionality are designed to help increase customers’ efficiency and ease of account management.

*Motion Charts* provide advanced but easy-to-use multi-dimensional analysis. Customers can select their own metrics to compare and then view how those metrics interact over time. By animating data, Motion Charts make discovering insights much easier and more obvious than when viewing data in traditional graphs and columns.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*Integration with Google AdSense gives new and existing AdSense publishers access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance by both page and referring site. Armed with this new data about user activity, they can now make more informed decisions on how to improve user experience on their sites and optimize their AdSense units to increase revenue potential.

The aim of this new feature set is to offer customers the flexibility to choose how their data is presented to them and the extensibility to integrate Google Analytics data with their other data sources. These capabilities will help further unlock the potential of both large and smaller website owners to improve visitor interaction with their websites and improve the value of their marketing investments.

More details on the entire new feature set including screen shots and videos demonstrating the new features will be available on the Google Analytics blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com.

If you would like early access to the feature set, please contact us. As Google Analytics Authorized Consultants we can offer a handful of clients to start with these new features and place them on the early release list.

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms.

Read more about how we scale and normalize the data.On the results page, you’ll also see a list of the top searches, top rising searches, and a world heat map graphically displaying the search volume index with regions, subregions, and cities.

Keep in mind that Insights uses data aggregated over millions of users without personally identifiable information, and is powered by computer algorithms. Additionally, Insights only shows results for search terms that receive a significant amount of traffic, and enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool. For more information about how Google protects privacy, please refer to our privacy policy.

Go try out Google’s Insights for Search for your keywords. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

However, my big concern came when I searched for broader terms like “conversion rate,” “web analytics,” “Search Engine Marketing” and then did searches for things like “airlines” and “marketing blogs.”

What was apparent in every one of those searches was that Cuil was using images from another website next to a listing for one of the competitor’s websites. For example, on the “conversion rate” search, the conversion rate squirrel stood next to Widemile. In the “search engine marketing” search, an image for search-optimization.com was next to our friend Gord Hotchkiss Enquiro’s listing.

The only “marketing blog” out there seems to belong to my friend Lee Odden as his Online Marketing blog dominated the results. Lee your blog is good, but there are many others that are also worthy. Finally, searching for “airlines” brought me competitors’ planes next to American and Delta Airlines results.

If Cuil is not going to bring back images that are directly tied to brands in their blended search, I believe they will have negative word of mouth for a while. It also probably won’t help to attract advertisers if that is their intention.

Are you seeing some of the same things happening in your initial searches on Cuil?

Customers will be buying subscriptions to a web-based expert software system  for continuous improvement of their online revenue goals. It solves the problem of how to prioritize and project manage online marketing optimization so that customers’ existing resources are focused on the changes that will have the largest revenue impact.

It doesn’t replace any tool you have today and it’s not consulting! It actually complements the resources you already use, because it’s software-based and requires only a minor amount of human intervention on our part to make sure the recommendations are top notch. Imagine having Bryan Eisenberg installed on your desktop.

We’re revolutionizing online marketing. Keep your eye on FUTR.OB.

Never Met a Search Engine With a Credit Card

I’ve seen Flash elements improve websites, I’ve seen all Flash websites that were both engaging and usable, but those sites are rare. Search engines may now be able to index the content in Flash, but does it mean that the Flash content is useful in converting visitors to sales? If you are looking for leads, subscriptions, or sales, then traffic is simply a means to an end, not the end.

Even advertising sites want people to click through to their advertisers. If what you create is sexy, cool, [insert any other positive adjectives here], but the content fails to attract attention, interest, build desire, and call your visitors to action, then you are wasting your time and their time.

You are playing a misleading numbers game where visitors are numbers, not people, and sales today is NOT a numbers game. In a recent A/B test with a client, we were able to reduce the homepage abandonment by 28.57% by substituting a flash element, with a static image. This change reduced load and wait time, it listed product benefits immediately, and we didn’t have to hope people would be patient enough to see the right part of the Flash animation. It also helped boost sales, since before the test so many people left before they got past the home page.

Please use Flash it really is a powerful tool.

Just please remember to make sure you measure the impact on your bottom line first. Search engines are great; but they don’t register, subscribe, or have credit cards to buy from you.

That’s a very large price to pay for having everything at our fingertips, all the time, in any format.

Our decision-making processes can’t always keep up with our choices. The same challenge applies to website design and content. The Web is a fantastic place to shop, research, and be entertained, but sometimes when I’m online, I notice physical fatigue when I’m trying to figure out where to go next!

When I’m evaluating a vendor’s Services page, should I:

• Sign up for their newsletter?
• Read about the awards they’ve won?
• Look at a list of clients?
• Read the CEO’s blog?

When I’m shopping for a health supplement, should I:

• Read about related products?
• Read about their latest “green” program?
• View my empty shopping cart?
• Become an affiliate?

Even though we come to a website with the best intentions, we’re by nature drawn to the shiny distractions that marketers and designers put along our path. We go down rabbit holes in websites and sometimes by the time we find our way back to the trail, we’ve lost our momentum . . . or maybe we’ve been interrupted and have to go back to work

So I’m wondering: How much money is lost each year because we overload our potential customers with information on our web pages? How many visitors are driven away by cluttered designs, too many messages, too many offers, and too many choices?

Here’s the problem: Marketers naturally want to use messaging, offers, promotions and more to persuade web visitors. But in their efforts, they often contribute to information overload, which is proven to hamper the decision-making process. Also, companies tend to add more content to their websites over time and rarely retire content that’s outdated or irrelevant.

The solution: Most web pages should have only one primary goal. If there are alternate options, offers, or next steps, that’s fine. But don’t interrupt the task at hand, and don’t overload your visitors with distractions.

The one exception I can think of is the homepage, which should, at a minimum, a) communicate Unique Value Proposition, and b) route visitors.

Should you remove these secondary goals and choices? Maybe, but sometimes making them less prominent is enough to move the needle. It comes down to a business decision whether your “Sizzlin’ Hot Summer Giveaway” promotion is worth distracting a certain percentage of visitors from their primary goal.

What if you don’t know the goal of all of your site’s pages? You could start with rediscovering who your customers really are, or some analysis of your website’s “data dump,” or you could hypothesize and run some tests. Sometimes the purpose of a page is simply to present options. That’s fine, but don’t distract visitors from understanding their options and making a decision.

So let’s get practical here:

• Category page primary goal = route visitors to sub-category or product page
• Product page primary goal = persuade visitors to purchase
• In the News page primary goal = build brand credibility
• Shopping cart page primary goal = get the cash!
• General content page primary goal = build persuasive momentum

Although it seems hard at first, it’s actually pretty easy to find a single, primary goal for most pages on your site. Then you have the harder task of deciding how to do away with unnecessary distractions, get rid of design clutter, and allow visitors freedom without information overload.

Sometimes having a new pair of eyes look at your site can really speed this process up.

If you’re overloading customers with info, you’re not alone. Many world-class, million-dollar sites are guilty of information overload, and even the best online marketers need to work on it constantly.

Best of luck. To avoid information overload, let’s focus on answering the three essential questions of Persuasion Architecture:

• Who are your visitors?
• What action do you want them to take?
• What will persuade them to take that action?

. . .

About the Author: Brendan Regan is a Persuasion Analyst at FutureNow, Inc. This is his first GrokDotCom post. Welcome to the blog, Brendan!

According to The New York Times,

”W00t,” a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher’s online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

Merriam-Webster’s president, John Morse, said ”w00t” was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

”It shows a really interesting thing that’s going on in language. It’s a term that’s arrived only because we’re now communicating electronically with each other,” Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call ”l33t speak” — that’s ”leet” when spoken, short for ”elite” to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Amit points out that Wikipedia members proposed deleting the W00t page from the Wikipedia database on December 12, claiming the term hasn’t yet reached general usage.

Hmm… I bet it won’t be deleted now. Then again, the whims of Wikipedia’s editors aren’t subject to anything beyond their whims. I also wonder what impact this might have on people searching for “woot” and “Woot.com,” since it’s now the #1 search result.

Each day, Woot.com has a new featured item for sale. One new thing per day. If you don’t buy it now, better luck next time.

I visit Woot.com each morning just because of their excellent copywriting — you can get great words and great deals. Today, they’re selling a touchscreen GPS. Maybe the folks from Wikipedia should get one; it could help steer them on a better path.

W00t!

This comes after Amazon snuck One-Click past the patent system by changing the word “a” to “the,” and adding the phrase “purchasable through a shopping cart model.” According to Slashdot, lawyers for Amazon “apparently managed to reinstate two of CEO Jeff Bezos’ 1-Click Patent claims that were rejected a month earlier.”

Once again, Jeff Bezos is making his mark on commerce.

Amazonian Customer Disservice

If you don’t get your order on time, just chalk it up to Amazon thinking you aren’t worth it as a customer. Do you think they’re doing this to prevent other companies from providing lousy service?

This is a great move for the web analytics industries and their customers. Consolidation helps to create standards. My personal congratulations to Jim MacIntyre and all our friends at Visual Sciences, and to Josh James and crew at Omniture. Best of luck to all involved.

How will these two giants compete? Here’s what we know so far…

Future Now’s Chief Scientist John Quarto-vonTivadar — who’s speaking at the Emetics Summit and spent a good chunk of last week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters — emailed me to share his opinion of the Google Analytics updates. John tells us that the in-site search is “cool,” and that it’s not dependent on Google search at all. According to John, it’s simply “a way of recording what searches are being done in-site, then relating metrics to it.” But it’s not that deep, he says. In other words, the big news isn’t how well the in-site search feature works, but that in-site search can be tracked at all. As for the rest of Google’s announcement, John says:

Event tracking is very cool and the most important feature. However, [Google's announcement] underplayed the switch from using urchin.js to ga.js. It’s a big deal. The script is more complex (e.g., more features for the developers), and my understanding is that once you make the switch, you can’t switch back. I’m not sure whether the data will migrate forward, that would have to be checked. Also, you can’t use both urchin.js and ga.js at the same time, so it seems to be very much of a jump-into-the-deep-end-of-the-pool thing.

Outbound links are an additional new feature. I think they’ve made a mistake, however, in counting anything that happens up until an outbound link as ‘zero time on site,’ and I predict they will end up being forced to reconsider that. They also never made clear — although I’m sure they are clear themselves — as to whether the new Urchin reflects all the functionality of the new ga.js, or whether one or the other is more advanced. The next questions would be, If that’s the case, when will the other ‘catch up’? So, if you do the free software, you get X features, but if you do the paid software, you get Y features — but why is Y less than X ??

[UPDATE: Marketing Pilgrim has a great screenshot of the event tracking integration, and Avinash Kaushik gives a full tutorial of how to use in-site search data.]

The Emetrics Summit crowd also got to see a demonstration of Microsoft’s beta platform, thanks to Product Manager Ian Thomas. On his Web Analytics World blog, Manoj Jasra shares his first impressions of Gatineua :

One of the coolest features which I noticed was the ability to measure the performance of individual webpage sections giving a whole new level of granularity. Microsoft hopes to takeaway some of Google Analytics’ market share, however I don’t think this is the easiest of tasks. Looking at the initial screenshots of Gatineau you can see that they are also implementing an ajax based user interface, however it currently doesn’t have polish of Google Analytics’ interface.

Once again, it looks like Microsoft has some catching up to do — but at least they’re getting used to it.

What do you think? Can Microsoft hurry up, launch, and out-pace Google Analytics, or will the “search giant” continue beating the “software giant” on its own bean stalk?

A new collective of forward-thinking marketers has emerged, and you’re all invited to join in and tap their knowledge directly. Founded by John Marshall, Michael Stebbins, and Avinash Kaushik, Market Motive — a premium service for marketing professionals — offers a concrete advantage to its members: direct access to some of the brightest minds in online conversion, email, search, web analytics, and ROI marketing. That’s why we’re especially proud to announce that Market Motive has named our own Bryan Eisenberg to its marketing “Dream Team.” Bryan will serve as the group’s resident conversion expert, a respectful nod to Future Now’s trailblazing work in the field of Conversion Rate Marketing since 1998 (when conversion and ROI took a back seat to “hits” and “eyeballs” — ouch!).

In the press release, which also announces the addition of Alan Rimm-Kauffman to its faculty, Market Motive CTO — and former CEO and founder of ClickTracks — John Marshall had these kind words:

Bryan’s knowledge of psychology and how that influences the way people buy is legendary. He brings expertise and insight that has been honed through spending hour upon hour optimizing the sites of some of the largest companies on the web. Once you have seen Bryan dissect a website and explain how each component can be improved, you will be amazed at how sites can be improved to produce more revenue. Market Motive subscribers have already benefited from the insights he provides through a special interactive site clinic. We are delighted to have his involvement.

By connecting with members in small groups, via webinar-style online conference calls and training sessions, Market Motive’s faculty has the opportunity to answer specific questions in real time. It’s like having your own personal study group to help you tackle the tough issues. Here’s what one member, Immeria’s Stephane Hamel, had to say about the experience:

I spent about an hour with Bryan. We talked about my goals as a freelance, discussed persuasion architecture, and I had the honor to take a glimpse at the internals of their process and tools. Persuasion architecture is all about process, but it’s also supported by a tool (or a set of tools) that could elevate any analyst job to levels of insights that were unimaginable without actually tying up Bryan to a chair beside you.

Very cool! Being recognized by Market Motive as a leader in online and multi-channel strategy is a wonderful thing, but if we know Bryan at all, hearing feedback like this from the rest of his peers after working with them directly is what makes him wake up each morning before the rest of us, surprising the lucky folks here at Future Now with new ideas. Our staff and clients may be spoiled by him, but thanks to Market Motive, now’s your chance to share Bryan’s insights first-hand.

Congratulations, Bryan. You grok!

Will they outsell Apple’s iTunes?

Check it out and compare it to iTunes. Do you think one is better than the other? Will you shop at both or keep your loyalty to one?

(UPDATE: It seems that Virgin Digital, the online Virgin Megastore has closed.)

According to the news release:

HACKER SAFE integration will offer its certification throughout a network of more than 11,000 sellers and over 300 co-brand partner Web sites that incorporate PriceGrabber.com’s CPC (cost per click) product listings. According to a November 2006 Gartner report, nearly half of online U.S. adults, or 46% of more than 155 million people, say that concerns about theft of information and data breaches have affected their online transactions.

“Security concerns strongly influence many online decisions – especially when using comparison shopping engines,” noted ScanAlert CEO Ken Leonard. “Trust is a significant factor in comparison shopping. Confidence in a retailer’s trustworthiness can make the difference between shoppers clicking the buy button, or continuing their search.”

Pricing engines are a great tool for customers looking to get the best deal on a given product. But getting the “best deal” means precious little if the customer doesn’t feel confident giving you her money.

Is this a step toward creating a “value engine”? That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

But it’s much more than a directory. Helium allows articles its community considers more valuable to get better visibility — and a bigger chunk of its ad revenue. They also have an area for debate and have included a marketplace for publishers and authors to connect. Today, they have publishers willing to pay from $16 to $100 per article to some 69,000 writers, who’ve already generated 400,000 articles on 60,000 topics.

As a Publisher, you can list a bounty for any articles you want written. Authors then submit stories following your guidelines and compete for the bounty. Publishers can select any article as the winner, while Helium’s peer review ratings help rank submissions.

Would you use articles written by anonymous freelancers? Have you already? Could you see yourself using Helium to bolster your content offerings and, possibly, your search engine rankings?

Research commissioned by eBay showed that 56 percent of PayPal customers are more likely to buy from a retail site if a deferred payment option is available, eBay said.

This is an interesting development in the online payment services battle. Amazon (AMZN) just announced they’re entering the space with their own payment system. So, this news ups the ante between PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payment.

Retailers who don’t take advantage of this may be missing out. We’ve seen the success that offering a deferred payment options has brought to several retailers we’ve worked with. To see a great example of how this deferred payment is being used by a retailer, check out Ice.com.

The Campaign Optimizer may propose any combination of the following changes:

• Change daily budget.
• Add new keywords.
• Delete keywords.
• Change keyword matching options.
• Adjust keyword cost-per-click (CPC) bids.

This is certainly going to help many of the people who set their AdWords account and have left them on autopilot, hoping to get a great return. Google acknowledges that they want to continue to increase the capabilities of the Campaign Optimizer. Of course, GrokDotCom readers know optimizing your ad spend is only half the battle. Once you get them to click on your Google AdWord, you need to provide them with the proper scent and persuasive experience in order to get them to take the action you want them to take. Very few businesses — other than Google — make money by getting people to just click on the ads.

This is another step in the right direction for Google.

Go ahead and download it now: Mac – PC. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

(Betsy, I want more!!!)

The deal must still get approval from the Bancroft family, which controls 64% of Dow Jones’s voting power. The Bancroft family remains sharply divided on a sale to News Corp. While some members are open to a deal, others have been looking hard for an alternative. The Bancrofts want to pick the buyer which they perceive is most likely to offer editorial independence — and the highest price. They’re concerned with Rupert Murdoch’s track record of editorial intervention.

We know Christopher Bancroft has been working hard to break apart the deal.

Do you think the deal will be approved? If so, what do you think Mr. Murdoch will do with the Journal and Dow Jones’ other publications?

Update 7/18/07: The sale is one step closer to being finalized. Dow Jones released a statement late last night saying that its board had determined that it would be prepared to approve “and recommend to the Dow Jones stockholders, including the Bancroft family stockholders,” an agreement to sell all outstanding shares of Dow Jones for $60 per share in cash. The final decision will be made by the Bancrofts, the family which owns the controlling interest in Dow Jones and could still block the sale. Two of the four Bancroft family members on the board did not take part in the vote.

SoundExchange, the performance rights organization that pressured Congress for the rate hikes — and whose site is in desperate need of our services — testified late yesterday that they wouldn’t enforce the new rates, which were to go into effect this Sunday, July 15th, and be retroactive to 2006.

Wired has the scoop:

Going forward without the royalties being collected, SoundExchange and webcasters will negotiate a new royalty rate with Congress looking over their shoulder — “and last but not least, the public looking over Congress’s shoulder.” Alternatively, Congress now has time to consider the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would set webcaster royalties at 7.5 percent of revenue and allow them to continue operating pretty much as they have been.

Either way, this is a big win for webcasters and their listeners. Again, this is a reprieve, and internet radio can’t be considered saved until new rates are set that everyone can live with.

Want to know more about Sphinn?

Looks interesting. What do you think?

Longtime readers know I’ve often been skeptical of MLBAM (the digital arm of the owners of all 30 MLB franchises). It’s nothing personal, it’s just that, as purveyors of America’s Pastime, they’ve been given a product most marketers would kill for, yet they often seem to be actively trying to drop below the NBA in the court of public opinion. It’s gotten so bad at times, the Consumerist aptly dubbed MLBAM the “Department of Hating Your Customers.”

Recently, Newsweek profiled the organization and hailed it as a huge success, given that revenues are up 30% to a whopping $400M. Keep in mind, before you buy the hype and tout them as “the grand slam online leader,” these guys have inventory that includes unlimited supplies of memorabilia, authentic hats & gear, tickets (both retail as well as those they resell) FOR ALL 30 FRANCHISES–not to mention an advertising model that has a steady stream of big name brands who essentially advertise online to round out the rest of their MLB sponsorship campaign (and round up on the balance sheet). $400M per yr? Let’s talk when they get to $4B/yr online.

Sounds high, I know… until you realize the 30 franchises do over $50B combined revenue each year. Is setting the bar below 10% really striving too high? I digress, as I promised myself this wouldn’t be an overly negative post.

Back to Actober.com, I actually have a good feeling about this. Honest, transparent, non-self-serving (or at least, not only self serving). This isn’t Chevy revisited. (Or at least it doesn’t appear to be. ) Of course, the execution has yet to be seen, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see baseball fans, past and present, more actively engaged this October, and not just to tune in to a possible revised version of the 1986 World Series–but, you know, with an alternate ending.

Is an “undead” metric any better than a dead one?

What’s funny is that Bryan Eisenberg and I were just chatting about this over IM last night, wondering what ever happened to Nielsen’s “June announcement” about this dumb sea change in metrics. For those who don’t know, Bryan eulogized the Web Page last October in his ClickZ column, and did so in person at Emetrics Summit. Still, I thought he said it best over IM (edited for grammar):

None of these metrics measure anything telling about the user experience in a Web world. They’re proxies for the old “reach” and “frequency” metrics Nielsen’s been pawning for years. When old media wonks wanted some “scientific” measurement system to “accurately” buy and sell media. Yup, those panel surveys were accurate and scientific, alright. Because of the inconsistencies from one experience to the next, this medium cannot–and by it’s nature will not–allow for comparative metrics. In this medium, the visitor’s in control and, as we can see from comScore’s cookie-based research we’ve seen, they’ll continually make it harder to measure them.

Google’s succeeded in selling lots of ads because they didn’t buy into the old school paradigm. Everyone else just doesn’t want to admit they’re waiting for their cat to bark, and for the world to go their way again. Let me know how that works out…

Speaking of IM, it turns out that “time spent” now gives AOL ranking credit not just for people at AOL.com, but for people using AIM–to which we can only say, “LOL!” Google’s rank drops from #3 to #5 because they give people quick, relevant results, while AOL jumps to #1 from #6 because people are using a one-off application. Hmm…

Of course, the blogs are already going nuts. Micro Persuasion’s Steve Rubel who, months after Bryan, predicted the death of the page view in Not-stradamus-like fashion is reveling in the news. Back in February, Rubel asked “What Willl Replace the Almighty Page View?” (whether he read my response about the futility of “time spent” is anyone’s guess). Meanwhile, some are more hesitant to rejoice:

The news immediately made Slashdot, where worries were expressed that this emphasis on viewing time will cause designers (and their bosses) to try anything they can think of to slow down the user.

OK, now that I’ve flooded you with links, here are the real questions:

• What are the rankers at Nielsen smoking?
• Are they aware of this thing called “tabbed browsing”?

[UPDATE: Bryan Eisenberg discusses "What Advertisers Should Be Measuring" and why "time spent" could prove disastrous.]