How to measure Web traffic and Google

The Web Numbers article talks about reach, which is a lot like “share” in TV news. Ratings report how many people were watching a show; share reports what percentage of the audience you got of TVs that were on in your town. So you might get an 8 rating but a 16 share if only half the town’s TVs were on. Reach reports a site’s visits as a proportion of all Web users online at a time – but is it local or national or worldwide? Is that a proportion of users in Austin or everywhere? Does it matter? I guess it depends on your business and site. A local bar like Antoine’s has a different audience than Dell, so it makes sense that different types of sites (like Meebo) would need different ways to measure traffic. By the way, a reader, “DNJC,” noted in the comments after the Web measure article; “Page views have always been a crude measure of Web site usage.”

Wow, that third paragraph in Jeff Jarvis’s article on Google is an amazing description of how Earth-shaking Google’s online advertising is. It never occurred to me how revolutionary online advertising was in so many ways, especially eliminating media scarcity (adding elasticity to the demand curve) and tying advertising to performance. I also think it’s fascinating that new media companies like Google and Apple make money “through the side door,” like downloadable music and ads. The idea that “every product is great” works online in the Long Tail, especially in digital environments where storing and “shipping” 1 million costs the same as one. In that arena, advertising as information – “the economics of information” – makes perfect sense. It’s focusing on cognitive media effects, making people aware of your product or service. After that the few customers you need to reach can go online and find you. You don’t have to convince them yours is the “it” product – you just need to get your distribution center and the existing customers in the same digital showroom. At this point, can you start to ignore affective effects, especially if you’re the first to offer something? Is there less need for complementary advertising because the market for your product already exists in the Long Tail – you just need to have it find you? (Although Apple still lives by complementarity, being the ultimate “it” company.)