Comments on: Fun With Numbers: Do New Ratings Measurements Mean New Valuations?

By: Nielsen/NetRatings Total Minutes metric. Sounds nice, how does it work? — everwas

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 09:34:38 +0000

[...] AllThingsD : Fun with Numbers [...]

By: Bill Pytlovany

Bill Pytlovany — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 01:08:10 +0000

Wow, it’s great to see another familiar name from long ago.
One day I noticed I was not getter my favorite newsletter anymore and thought maybe you fell off to planet.

I’m pleased to have found you’re here letting folks knew what you think.

Bill Pytlovany

By: ian kennedy

ian kennedy — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:33:12 +0000

Wrong URL – sorry:

http://cavitate.net/flashpoint....._nice.html

By: ian kennedy

ian kennedy — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:32:26 +0000

I just posted the text of an email I got from Netratings PR which has answers to these questions.

It’s as I suspected. Their proprietary measurement software (runs only on Windows PCs) can measure what’s “in focus” and credit minutes spent appropriately.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/ar.....e_view.php

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:33:56 +0000

Hi Ian — the official answer is, I don’t know because I didn’t get the opportunity to ask. The speculative answer is: probably they measure how you think they do.

While I agree it’s flawed, it’s one of the things sister company Nielsen Media measures with TV sets, and at least relative to itself, that’s a number that keeps going up.

While I am right there with you that if that’s the case, it sometimes will include flawed data. But since one of your tabs is sooner or later bound to be Google or whatever it will be a flaw that would equally apply to everything so for relative comparisons, I do not mind it so much.

By: ian kennedy

ian kennedy — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 05:41:38 +0000

Will someone please tell me if “Time Spent” includes time when the site is no longer in focus? I usually have several tabs open and if I’m working on something, all of these will be in a minimized browser window. Any metric that counts this as something I pay attention to is flawed.