Micro Persuasion
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Yahoo's Chief of Insights reflects what Evan Williams and I have been saying for awhile now: the page view is indeed dead. He's calling on the industry to develop new metrics that measure this new world more accurately. Amen to that. So let's start the debate. What will succeed the almighty page view?

I am going to make an argument that whatever succeeds the page view (RIP) needs to go beyond counting traffic. In a Long Tail world we shouldn't care about big amalgamated numbers. Marketers are going to need to reach atomized targets who will hopefully go and spread the message to others. This could be a universe of five our six people in some cases. We want to impact the right "cells" so that they go out and multiply.

Everyone loves a good footrace. We're obsessed with knowing what the top movie, TV show, web site, songs are. We like to follow the standings and track the tallest, biggest whatevers in the world. The problem is that it's all about micro now. Marketers want to build sustained relationships with small groups that will hopefully create a multiplier effect.

That my friends means death to all traffic stats. They're irrelevant in this new era. Do I expect this to shift anytime soon? Probably not. The advertising economy is built on reach. It's time for it to change to depth.