Compete.com twisted "attention" metric
Compete recently introduced a new feature called "Attention", which they simply equate to the time spent on a site versus all other sites on the Web. I've been discussing the concept of attention economy in web analytics for a while and the recent introduction of Compete.com, although interesting, is too narrow.
I'm surprised so many bloggers, especially those involved in web analytics, jumped on the bandwagon and are giving Compete so much "attention"! Let me explain my point of view.
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the implicit association that "attention = time". Attention is "the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things". Although the time is one factor of attention, research demonstrated there are very different brain level activity going on depending on the cognitive involvement of that activity.
Example
Let's just take one of the many examples: eBay, YouTube, MySpace. In this example, we clearly see MySpace receives a magnitude more "time" (no, I won't say "attention"!) than eBay, and eBay more than YouTube. First impression: I'm surprised... But my point is the type of "attention" is really different when we look at each of those sites. Do they share the same attention characteristics? Even if you spend an hour in each of those activities, do you have the same experience when doing grocery or shopping for a new MP3 player (eBay), looking at TV (YouTube) or visiting friends (MySpace)? I hope not!Compete 200
The "Compete 200" isn't much better, saying MySpace receives more attention is just plain wrong. Saying we spend more of our free time on MySpace might be right, but I can guaranty you spending an hour on MySpace is really not the same thing as spending an hour checking my finance status at my online bank! Which one is more voluntary or averse? Which one is involves more brain power (front or back of mind), and of course, which one is more attractive...Credit where credit is due
Compete.com is not all wrong, I'm not saying that! It does offer a new interesting information that was not available before. At least, not presented that way. I just disagree that attention = time.What do you think? Am I being to picky? Is there some basis to my argument? Do you agree?
3 comments:
Hi,
I'm the founder and CTO of Compete. Thanks for taking the time to checkout Compete.com.
I wanted to make one correction. Our attention metric is not a simple measure of "time". It is based on the premise that we have a finite amount of time (we all have to sleep); yes over time the collective time we spend on a medium like the web can grow but we must give up another activity to do so. The Attention measure is calculated using both "time" and "traffic" (measured by unique visitors), not simply based on time.
Here's how we describe on our site:
"Attention considers all the time we collectively spend online and then determines what percentage of that time was spent on a given site.
Although unique visitors and page views are critical pieces of the puzzle - these metrics often fail to accurately measure engagement on sites using technologies such as AJAX and online video.
Attention is a powerful way to plan and measure the web because it is a finite resource that we manage selfishly. We grant our attention to people, activities and websites that merit receiving our most precious resource - time. If a site can garner more of an individual's time it should generally be considered a good thing. With that said, there are exceptions (Search Engines for example), which is why we don't present Attention as the king of all metrics. We see Attention as an additional piece of the puzzle."
Thanks again,
David
Thank you very much for the comment David, and I hope you didn't take my opinion to harshly. You are absolutely right that time is a valuable finite resource, and as such, Compete.com brings visibility to something that wasn't available or at least, not presented that way in the past.
The next step in the evolution of attention measurement might be to go beyond "time" and more into the "cognitive process" involved in the time spent on a site.
Thank you for taking the time :)
I am commenting based only on what I am reading here. I haven't checked Compete out yet.
Frankly, why this is of interest escapes me. We already knew from Hitwise which of the biggest sites received more visits. As a marketer of a very specialized product (example), how useful is it to me to know that my web attention metric is 0,000000000023%?? This kind of nyumber would lead me to believe nobody cares (well, maybe they don't after all)!
I think notions such as "Engagement", referring to E. peterson's work and discussions, are much more useful.
Again, maybe it's just me who don,t get it.
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