Yahoo, Page Views, And The Next Metric

Ajax technology that refreshes content within a web page without reloading the entire page likely contributed to a drop in page views experienced at Yahoo; it also indicates the need for a new metric to replace page views as a measurement in ad performance.

Earlier in the week, comScore Media Metrix disclosed that MySpace had surpassed Yahoo in terms of page views. While it may be a feel good story for News Corp, it isn’t a complete story either.

Yahoo explained the shift as one that reflected its heavier reliance on Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, dubbed Ajax. It’s a method of making web pages more alive for their viewers thanks to their ability to bring new content to the page without downloading it again from a server.

Ajax is having a greater impact than user convenience. Micro Persuasion blogger Steve Rubel declared the page view as advertising metric a dying concept.

As web companies using Ajax extensively realize this, there will be a greater clamor to adopt a new metric for measuring the effectiveness of an online ad campaign. The Internet Advertising Bureau has been working on crafting a standard for this.

Yahoo dominates MySpace in terms of unique visitors, a total approaching 130 million per month in October. They are serving that audience while reducing the number of times those visitors have to go from one page to the next for information.

While that pleases users, it doesn’t help Yahoo or its display advertising clients. Display ads generate revenue on a CPM basis. Fewer page views mean fewer opportunities to show visitors those ads.

Conditions look ready for a shift to unique visitors over page views for purposes of measuring advertising impact. Advertisers will want to audit that information, and websites shifting to that model will have to keep their advertisers happy.

Transparency into the operations of sites like Yahoo will be a factor in determining measurement. Yahoo will not want to just hand over raw server logs to advertisers, so the stage may be set for third-party firms, perhaps the big names in the accounting business, to step into a role as independent and confidential auditors of that information.

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