Dive Brief:
- Scientists from Yahoo Labs have issued a report claiming that time spent on content— called "dwell time"— is a better metric for measuring what people enjoy online.
- Organizations like Nielsen and Chartbeat join Yahoo in claiming CTR is an inferior form of measurement.
- According to Yahoo's research of its own pages, dwell time is “a proxy to user satisfaction for recommended content, and complements or even replaces click-based signals.”
Dive Insight:
The growing mass of data supporting alternative metrics other than CTR is growing, but the industry hasn't come to a consensus on what exactly should be the baseline measurement. Eventually, a balance of several metrics will likely found to be the ultimate indicator of online success.
