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Fri, Apr 24 2015 23:12:36

Audience Metrics and What Really Matters

It's a great big world out there in world of metrics. You have to wade through terms like page views, engagement, unique views, but what really matters? MU's Joy Mayer, Angilee Shah of Public Radio International, and Heather Blythe of Cox Media Group explore how they use data to make decisions.

  1. Here are the top 7 takeaways from the panel.


  3. 1. The most expensive tool isn’t always the best tool:
    “The name of the game is free or very, very cheap,” said Angilee Shah. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Qualtrics, and Chartbeat (the last one is not free) are the main tools being used to measure web traffic and audience engagement. The speakers all suggested using more than one program to gage these statistics in order to have a more accurate reading of your content performance. Blythe also mentioned using a program called Banjo to find hyper local audience information.
  6. 2. Beware of results measured by Facebook analytics.
    Everyone wants to “tap into the black box” of Facebook content analytics but the panelists warned against basing your audience engagement or post success on the feedback you receive from the social media platform. “Be very choosey about what you use from Facebook,” said Shah. “We ignore the reach measurement because I don’t think it’s an accurate number because they are constantly refiguring the measurement and it’s hard to know which of those are truly independent views.”
  10. 3. How audience metrics can be used in current journalism classrooms.
    The panelists had different views on how helpful it would be to incorporate data into the classroom. Blythe said, “I would have it weaved throughout the process because otherwise it sets the expectation that it’s not as important and creates the divide between digital and traditional, old versus new.” However, Shah disagreed with teaching a certain type of analytic program, saying, “the tools and the metrics are constantly changing, so teaching one style of metrics is not that useful. I would recommend students take a math class to learn statistics before taking web classes,” said Shah.
  13. But sometimes it's just as important to look at what stories didn't do well.
  15. 4. How audience metrics can drive your newsroom decisions:
    The panelists agreed that it would be problematic to base all of your newsroom decisions on metric numbers but it is important to be able to read and analyze the data quickly to help boost your performance. Blythe said Cox Media leverages content on Chartbeat through scroll depth – or, how deep into the article viewers go. “We use scroll depth to decide whether the story isengaging enough to add extra components,” said Blythe. Shah also mentioned using Chartbeat to monitor daily changes. “We will change headlines depending on how the story is doing online,” said Shah, “the worse thing is that great story that no one is looking at.”
  16. The trio also had quite a few suggestions about everything from how to make decisions based on data and how to teach students to do the same.
  23. 5. Page Views: Do they really matter?
    One of the biggest concerns in audience metrics and analytics is the plague of page views. Should that be the key focus or should overall page views beignored?

  24. Shah said, “For us [at Public Radio International], it’s use in context with other metrics, but we want to focus on real growth. We want to see page views and return visitors, so if your page views are going up but the number of return visitors aren’t, you may be doing something wrong.”

  25. Blythe said, “It’s a necessary evil. In our reports you will see page visits first because it’s a very engaging thing. But we also pay close attention to visits from different platforms like Google search and social media like Facebook and Twitter.”
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