April 22, 2002

How To Measure Cyberspace

Part 1: Understand the Challenges
and Your Objectives

By Katharine Delahaye Paine

The more things change, the more they remain the same...

In 1952 Fortune's then managing editor Ralph D. Paine gave a speech to the Ad Club of St. Louis in which he stated, "Unless television executives can figure out a way to prove its effectiveness, it will not survive..." Shortly after that speech, The Advertising Research Foundation blessed Arthur Nielsen's concept for measurement of television audience and the Nielsen Ratings became a standard unit of measurement for television advertisers.

So it was not surprising that in the early days of the Internet, fearing that the 'Net might not survive without adequate measurement to justify the expenditures, the market cried out for a "Nielsen of the Internet." Today—trillions of hits, millions of page views, and thousands of speeches later—there still isn't a "Nielsen of the Internet" and the one organization that came closest to it is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

There are some very good reasons why we don't have the same sort of standards that are used in other media. The first is that the Internet is not a medium like television. It is a marketplace where people buy and sell things, and one of those things may be advertising, but it is just as likely to be goods, services and information. A better analogy is that the Internet is, in fact, part of the infrastructure like the phone company or the utility company. No one justifies their telephone system or the need for electricity. They accept it as part of doing business. So too, the Internet is an integral part of doing business.

Secondly, even for the small percentage of web sites that base their business on an advertising model, television is the wrong analogy. When television began, it was tightly controlled by government licenses and by the three networks. They had 24 hours of airtime a day to sell. As we who are trying to measure it well know, the Internet is a free-for-all. Not enough banner space on one site? Just add more pages, change the banners more frequently—all for pennies, rather than the millions of dollars that it costs to add another network.

The third major difference between those early days and today is that the Internet has brought about a revolution in marketing far beyond what even the most forward thinking of us might have imagined. I don't use the term "revolution" lightly. It is a remarkably precise term.

Because, in truth, consumers are revolting against, and seizing power from, the marketers. Mitch Kapor has described the Internet as the "ultimate democratic society—a truly chaotic universe." It represents the unleashed raw will of millions of consumers. As The Cluetrain Manifesto clearly points out, the consumers are in control and they’re going to let YOU know what they think by changing their behavior.

The challenges...

The biggest challenge to a researcher on the web is the sheer enormity of the task. There are now 3 billion web pages in existence, some 80,000 newsgroups and approximately 15,000 editors and reporters writing for online publications.

The good news is that technology can help you find your way through this vast maze and there are a number of organizations out there that will be happy to assist you in gathering your data. The bad news is that chances are the data you gather will have major gaps in it and may be of questionable validity. Organizations like Standard Rate and Data Service and Media Metrix are making concerted efforts to audit and verify traffic rates and provide more accurate data on things like page views, hits and visits.

However, there are still gaps. Publications that require subscribers to log on will not be included in most web searches. Even the most comprehensive search firms can only gather about 60-80% of what you want. That contrasts sharply with print clipping services that return about 85%.

Finally, the resources required can be daunting. Remember that for every article that appears in the New York Times, there could be nine that appear in www.NYTIMES.com—one for every time they update their pages.

Your Objectives...

So how do you measure the effectiveness of your web PR efforts? Essentially the same way you'd measure any other marketing efforts. The first, and most difficult, question each Internet marketer needs to ask is: What do you hope to accomplish with your web efforts?

There are three major categories of purpose, though, knowing the web, I'm sure someone will come up with a dozen more before the month is out.

1. Proactive publicity
   Almost all organizations today include "the Internet" as an audience, or category of publicity. Recent statistics indicate that consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet first for information on purchases, life choices and news. A proactive PR campaign today must include a web presence. Recognizing that it requires a different type of activity and has a completely different set of editors, smart organizations dedicate a Web-savvy individual(s) to ensuring that news of their company or organization appears in the major e-zines, listings, and link lists.
   
   
2. Reactive crisis management
   Just as consumers are increasingly turning to the web for information, so too are journalists, particularly when they are following a crisis. In response, most savvy organizations have developed "crisis communications" web sites that they can turn on when necessary. These sites contain contact information and background data and thus become a place for journalists to get the most up-to-date data.
   
   
3. Relationship building
   The biggest difference between the Web and traditional media is its interactive nature. Thus it becomes a perfect medium for building relationships with your publics. In chat rooms and on web sites, around the world or in your neighborhood, dialog is occurring daily, even hourly, with constituencies, customers and prospects, as well as enemies. The goals of all those dialogs are the most basic of public relations objectives: to educate, convince, win over, make aware and persuade.

Go ahead to Part 2 of this article:
Six Sets Of Tools To Answer Your Questions.

Go ahead to Part 3 of this article:
The Seven Basic Steps for Success, No Matter What Measurement Device You Use.