Digital Publishing Metrics News: Page Views, Disaggregated Content, Ecommerce, Social Media

ALM, Hearst, Google, Apple, Texture, Time Inc. are the media companies and digital magazines leading the shift in publishing metrics

Much like old-school counting statistics in baseball, old-school publishing metrics like clicks and page views are falling out of favor as key performance indicators that provide a fuller picture rise in popularity. These KPIs deal mainly in audience engagement, and go hand in hand with how content is distributed across platforms including social media.

Timeless among publishing metrics, however, are dollars and cents, and ecommerce content strategy is a revenue stream that an increasing number of digital magazines are paying attention to.

Publishing Executive has recent articles on all of these issues and more. Let’s take a look at their latest coverage!

Is the Page View a Thing of the Past When It Comes to Publishing Metrics?

The page view, long a darling of publishers and marketers alike, is becoming less and less trusted and valued, Publishing Executive reports.

“A pageview can tell a publisher that an individual showed up to its site, but little about what they did once they arrived and the value of that visit. A share, a return visit, or time on site signify a level of engagement that could translate into robust audience growth and greater revenue opportunities. Publishers are turning to these KPIs in order to refine their content strategies and offer more compelling value for advertisers,” Ellen Harvey writes.

“At Condé Nast, pageviews were once the ultimate metric, but that strategy led to unintended consequences. For example, Condé Nast editors tended to publish slideshows or articles with slideshows embedded in them because they serve as an effective vehicle for increasing pageviews. But the tactic actually hurt user experience, said Stubbs. The lesson here is that publishers must first determine the goals of the brand before selecting KPIs.”

Is Content Aggregation a Thing of the Past, as Well?

Meanwhile, content aggregation is still the rage, but maybe not for long – disaggregation is gaining traction in the age of Apple News, Google, and Texture, which are monetizing with the right mix of ads, UX, and publisher compensation, Publishing Executive reports.

Ecommerce Content Strategy as a Revenue Stream for Publishers

Rodale, Time Inc., Hearst, and many other midrange and smaller niche publishers are buying into ecommerce content strategy, with Publishing Executive making the interesting point that experience managing subscription systems and retail distribution could help publishers handle the logistics of ecommerce operations.

ALM’s Social Media Publishing Metrics and Conversion

Highly recommended interview with ALM Digital Marketing Manager Alexandra Thayer on the Publishing Executive site about how the company is driving and converting social traffic.

“Editorial’s role is to push out their content and bring people back to the site to generate page views. Our content is metered, so while a social referral will get one free article view, they will need to register to continue reading. This is helpful to marketing because we are now able to identify our registered users for future communication. Audience development is tasked with driving regional subscription sales, and the corporate marketing team works to drive conversions for events, products, and national subscriptions,” Thaler told Harvey.

“We plan to capitalize on our behavioral targeting, and really would love for this feature to become available on LinkedIn. We currently use it on Facebook (which really is not our best audience) and Twitter, but we see much more value in LinkedIn since our offerings cater to a professional audience. When we’ve tested off-network display advertising with behavioral targeting, our strongest results are seen with look-alike audiences. This helps us reach new eyeballs and bring the right people into the funnel.”

What publishing metrics are you paying attention to? Let us know in the comments!

To read more about publishing metrics in the news, visit PubExec.com.

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