Yesterday, I wrote about MySpace logging in more traffic than Google’s search site and Yahoo!’s mail service last week.
Considering the importance for Yahoo! to maintain its perceived and actual rank as the largest media property on the Web, it was not surprising to see Yahoo! issue a statement regarding Hitwise’s recent report.
Yahoo!’s press agency emailed me today with Yahoo!’s position regarding the matter, which, upon reflection, made me think about the next wave of online audience measurement services in a few years. Read Yahoo!’s position regarding Hitwise and then see my comments on the greater issue at hand:
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Yahoo! Statement:
The report that Hitwise released today with the headline “MySpace Moves Into #1 Position for all Internet Sites” is misleading. The Yahoo! network is made up of many domains and it is not accurate to compare MySpace.com to just Yahoo!’s mail.yahoo.com domain. When taking into account all of Yahoo!’s domains together as an entire network, Yahoo! clearly remains the number one property in terms of audience share, duration share, page view share and days visited per month.
In the U.S. alone, Yahoo! attracts 129 million unique visitors per month, which represents 74 percent of the online population; in comparison, MySpace reaches only 30 percent of the online population with an audience of 52 million unique visitors. In addition, Yahoo! has the largest share of online time spent than any other property: Yahoo! accounts for 13 percent of users’ online time, while MySpace has only 3.2 percent share in users’ online time.
Yahoo! maintains its leadership position as the world’s most trafficked Internet destination online, with a community of more than 500 million unique monthly visitors from around the globe.
(These statistics are according to comScore Media Metrix, June 2006)
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It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that as Google is destroying Yahoo! in search - at least as measured by market share: 48% for Google vs. 29% for Yahoo! - that Yahoo! needs to maintain their lead vis-a-vis other media properties, especially against the flavour du jour social networking site MySpace, that many analysts estimate will eventually generate more pageviews than all other sites given its torrid growth (whether or not it can actually monetize that traffic is the question… but we won’t get into that now).
If it is indeed true that Hitwise only looked at mail.yahoo.com and not all of the traffic on yahoo.com, then the report is indeed misleading. And for Yahoo! - a $40 billion company that lists as its clients the Top 200 advertisers - it’s worth clarifying, big time!
Online Audience Measurement Services Lack Relevance
What this highlights more than anything else however is the discrepancy and dubious nature of online measurement services to begin with. Media Metrix comScore (MM) and Nielsen NetRatings (NNR) are two of the leaders in the space, but Hitwise (HW) has, to its credit, managed to make a name for itself in the space, and that is partially due to them coming up with category reports and studies that get its name out there by making waves. As such, the report was just one example of this tactic. That being said, perception is everything so more power to Hitwise for shaking up an industry that is at the mercy of MM and NNR.
While their stats are not incorrect per se, all data coming from these companies are misleading and need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Great, just got blacklisted by them! Jokes aside:
What is important to note is that while these companies publish numbers based on panels of web surfers, others like Alexa use their own methods (Alexa’s rank is very popular with business development types as well as media planners and investors, who take a quick peak at the Alexa rank to guage how popular or not a website is), but all are not very credible and representative of the Web.
But what all of the discrepancy between the numbers of Alexa, MM, NNR and HW highlight that the days of panels online might be numbered. We’re not talking in terms of months or a few years, but over time, while panels work well for TV, radio and other non-digital forms of media where real-time tracking is not really possible or practical, online, where technically every click and pageview can be tracked, eventually investors and ad buyers will ask for better.
Advantage: Google
This is why a company like Google has an inside advantage in this field. Not only does the search company generate 48% market share in search and as such, has a good sense of who searches what, it is a great gauge of online traffic. Do not forget that while Yahoo!’s traffic is the largest of all web properties, it knows little about traffic away from its domain address.
MySpace is similar, as News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media (FIM)’s CEO Ross Levinsohn accurately stated recently, the value of MySpace lies in all of the data the site generates on its tremendously large user base. But that is limited to behavior on MySpace.
Both Yahoo and MySpace though have a disadvantage vis-a-vis Google, who not only knows what people are searching for at any given moment, but also where people go.
Over time, it is not inconceivable to imagine that Google could extrapolate its stats to determine which sites are larger than others. It can probably do that right now, but probably does not cause, of course, it would be evil to do so (would it?).
What’s more interesting, or potentially scary, is Google’s acquisition of Urchin. Urchin is one of the many site-specific traffic measurement and analysis companies. The company’s product is great and free for some sites (disclaimer: we use Urchin - renamed Google Analytics after the acquisition - on WatchMojo.com). While Google Analytics is being used to promote Ad Sense, over time, Google could and should use it in another way.
As more and more people use Google Analytics, Google can extrapolate that data as well to not only publish stats on sites, but present a more accurate picture of which sites get how much traffic since their data would be largely site-specific and not panel-based. Panels, with their margins of error, confidence levels and what not are great, but we all know how reliable these can be.
Having worked with advertisers for over 6 years in the online space, I can tell you that the discrepancy between NNR, MM, Alexa and Hitwise leads to a confused and myopic view of Web traffic and rankings, and much dissatisfaction. The services are expensive, they are there, so they are used. But it does not take much to shift the paradigm if a better alternative came along.
So, if Google can maximize its Google search data and Google Analytics, it could be in a very powerful, albeit worrisome, position when it comes to knowing who goes where online.
Google already can control the flow of traffic: search for Madonna and Google can add a Google Music link funneling traffic away from websites, as it does. Google can also weave its wand and knock Yahoo! Finance below Google Finance in its organic results (which as of now still put Yahoo! finance on top).
Imagine if Google can also become a Hitwise and put its own spin on traffic data. Now that would be evil.
Yahoo’s PR folks, you might want to let Yahoo’s brass know of that.
Disclaimer: I own shares in Yahoo! and, while we are in the spirit of full disclosure, I am being sued by MySpace’s parent, News Corporation.
And… as a shareholder in Yahoo!, I am happy to see Yahoo! mandate their PR agency to address Hitwise’s misleading report, though I’d like to also get a sense of how Yahoo! plans on containing MySpace, catch up to Google and move that stock price!
Any word on that, folks?
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