Chartbeat’s Attention Minutes Metrics Accredited by the Media Rating Council

Real-time analytics firm Chartbeat has just announced that the Media Rating Council (MRC) has accredited their proposed metrics which measures the time spent by users on a webpage. A total of 21 metrics have been approved by the MRC, which Chartbeat says is part of their expanded platform that “provides media planning, reporting, and strategic services to premium publishers that want to measure and sell attention.” In their official announcement, Chartbeat was thrilled to be accredited by a prestigious organization, as this will boost their legitimacy in the eyes of other companies.

“The MRC exists to make sure that everyone is on equal footing and that people can trust the numbers they use,” stated Alex Carusillo on the Chartbeat blog. “Without them you’ve got a bunch of conflicting and unreliable numbers”.

The new metrics by Chartbeat proposes that audience minutes be measured for website engagement in place of the traditional clicks and page views that are currently being used. Chartbeat has long advocated the use of this metric, as they believe it will stir more websites to produce higher quality content. Chartbeat calls this the “attention web” and believes that an “attention economy” could grow out of the new metrics.

By measuring the time spent on websites, the company says this would greatly reduce the number of “clickbait” headlines found on social media, as well as the number of multi-page slideshows. While both formats do allow for a website to gain traction for page views, they are often criticized for the unnecessary scrolling of multiple pages for a slideshow and the use of bombastic, often low-common denominator appealing headlines for clickbait.

While ambitious, it remains to be seen if advertisers will be keen to adopt this new set of metrics when planning out campaigns. Many seem comfortable with the way digital ads are currently being measured on the Internet. Plus, embracing something new could disrupt the current balance of things. Benjamin Zeidler, from the digital-marketing agency Tenthwave, says that advertisers are among the “entrenched interests,” and that it would be a scary prospect for them to change how they do business, like “how they sell [ads], price and benchmark [ads].”

What’s your take on Chartbeat’s new analytics platform? Do you think advertisers will warm up to it eventually? Let us know what you think in the Comments below.

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