Engagement
Content owners and marketers all seek to engage with consumers for the purpose of generating revenue to earn a profit. As internet technology continues to evolve, consumers are increasingly engaging with non-commercial consumer-generated content, at the expense of content owners and marketers. Clearly, new techniques to engage consumers must be considered.
Nielsen/NetRatings understood these changes and on July 10, 20071 refined how internet properties are rated. In place of the traditional website page view metric, total minutes of consumer engagement was christened as the new primary metric.
Nielsen’s change was a simple reflection of what marketers desire: deeper levels of engagement with customers to build and reinforce brand awareness, and increase their chances to interact with consumers in ways that drive purchases.
While top websites on average connect with consumers 45 minutes per month, desktop applications engage consumers for hours, both actively and passively (when applications are not being actively used but remain visible on the desktop). Nielsen’s announcement turned the spotlight on several desktop applications advantaged by the new metric.
Mercury Intermedia desktop applications engage consumers for hundreds of hours each month, building content owners’ engagement metrics while providing their marketers with impressions they can only dream of today.
Extended engagement can be measured in revenue. Each desktop application install is viewed by 2.7 users and can generate three to four times the revenue of a single website unique.