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NY Times Twitter Superbowl Timeline was a pretty cool idea showing what people twitter from what part of the country at what time during the game.
Apart from the fact that it is just a cool simple idea, it is interesting to see a whole country’s public consciousness on display over a live event. At the same time, it’s a bit scary to see a big nation being this synchronous in a medium that is all about variety and heterogeneity.
Also interesting: check out the separate timeline for which ads got the most feedback on twitter during commercial breaks.
The whole debate over the definition of engagement and its associated measurement seems to be somewhat overdone.
Its just that now, we are not living in the more simplistic world of CPC, CPM and CPA style calculations. Engagement has multiple dimensions to it in terms of metric components. While every company must sit down and determine what they deem to be the proper measurement approach, here's one generic formula that can provide a starting point for this exercise.
Audience Engagement is a function of the number of clicks a visitor generates at a site, the amount of time they spent at the site, the frequency at which they return to the site, and their loyalty to the site as a member of the category for all of the sessions to that site during the reporting period. This online behavioral measurement should be looked at in combination with qualitative research data (such as surveys, polls and focus groups) to provide validation and deeper context to your reporting analysis exercises.
Σ (Ci + Di + Ri + Li + Bi + Fi + Ii)
The components of the calculation are:
Click Depth Index: Captures the contribution of page and event views
Duration Index: Captures the contribution of time spent on site
Recency Index: Captures the visitor’s “visit velocity”—the rate at which visitors return to the web site over time
Brand Index: Captures the apparent awareness of the visitor of the brand, site, or product(s)
Feedback Index: Captures qualitative information including propensity to solicit additional information or supply direct feedback
Interaction Index: Captures visitor interaction with content or functionality designed to increase level of Attention the visitor is paying to the brand, site, or product(s)
Loyalty Index: Captures the level of long-term interaction the visitor has with the brand, site, or product(s)
Using Comscore data, here is an example using news sites:
Using Audience Engagement (AE) we can say with a high level of certainty that a greater percentage of Internet users find CNN more engaging than MSNBC and Yahoo! News.
Final Thoughts
By establishing standard engagement metrics I believe that brand advertisers, advertising planners, and marketing managers will be able to use this data to make better decisions during the ad planning and media buying process. More importantly though, we can begin to look at the customers relationship with a brand in a more holistic way.
The blogosphere is loaded up with all flavors of Facebook Advertising analysis, and much handwringing over the notion of users expressing their enthusiasm for Diet Coke or “American Gangster” on their Facebook page and Coca-Cola or Universal Pictures placing ads in the newsfeed as the items are spooled to their social graph. (Beyond Facebook, it’s not hard to imagine a contextual ad showing up every time you Twitter something. Twitter “I am drinking beer with friends” and a Budweiser ad shows up. Now imagine the Twitter revolt.)
Cutting through the hype, Facebook Ads (description here) are the latest twist on viral marketing, taking advantage of the social graph, creating what Nick Carr cleverly calls “social graft.”
Nick wrote:
Marketing is conversational, says Zuckerberg, and advertising is social. There is no intimacy that is not a branding opportunity, no friendship that can’t be monetized, no kiss that doesn’t carry an exchange of value. The cluetrain has reached its last stop, its terminus, the end of the line. From the Facebook press release: “Facebook’s ad system serves Social Ads that combine social actions from your friends – such as a purchase of a product or review of a restaurant – with an advertiser’s message.” The social graph, it turns out, is a platform for social graft.
We’ll find out soon whether Facebookers will embrace the concept, accepting the blurring of their content and ad content and helping to fulfill Facebook’s business goals.
Brands will try to become intimate with Facebookers, enticing them to associate themselves with a product or service. If you love your Prius, become Toyota’s friend…and you’ll be able to stay up-to-date on the latest Prius news and games, meet other Prius fans, make ads for Toyota and maybe even get a free tuneup. I prefer just to drive my Prius.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is right. “Nothing influences a person more than the recommendation of a trusted friend,” he said during the rollout of social ads yesterday. But giving brands/advertisers somewhat equal (Facebook members have some controls) access to the social graph could be viewed as an intrusion into the relationships people establish with each other. On the other hand, Facebookers may just view it as another application on the service.
When I buy a movie ticket via Fandango, the transaction can be turned into a newsfeed item spooled to my social graph. Can I get a discount on the Fandango fee for messaging my social graph about my Fandango ticket? Maybe users get a cut of the action, for colluding with advertisers? But then, they might start gaming the system to increase their bounty.
Facebook Ads is a logical next step, but also an experiment. Google has mastered the art of monetizing search to market cap of $231 billion. MySpace is innovating with its HyperTargeting. With the taint of social graft, Facebook has come up with a way to monetize people in the form of its rapidly growing membership, profile data and social graph. Perhaps it will grow into its $15 billion valuation.
Now we can sit back or lean forward to see how Facebook responds to OpenSocial and how Google responds to Facebook’s people-based targeted advertising.
The whole debate over the definition of engagement and its associated measurement seems to be somewhat overdone.
