Need a Page View Replacement Stat

“If your web advertising strategy is built around page views, you’re going to have to find another way to sell.” - Terry Heaton

There’s lots of goofy web design artifacts that exist because ads are sold by page views: article pagination, skinny skinny column widths, partial text feeds, MySpace.

Hopefully, all a remedy for this insanity will be with us soon, for according to Heaton, Nielsen NetRatings will drop page views for time spent. Wow! Innovation! Creativity! Sarcasm!

Metrics that can be executed by a robot only encourages more robots. Measuring time spent just means the page view robots will be traveling much slower.

So what’s a publisher what wants ads and a advertiser that wants smaller newsholes to measure?

How about actions instead of the ever silly impressions?

How about engagement and passion instead of reach?

Later:
Searching for a ‘print’ button makes this an arms race.

Robert Scoble raises the same issue:

“I keep bugging Dan Farber about [offering full text feeds] and he says he can’t do anything about it because of the advertising model that ZDNet has chosen.”