Web Survey Bibliography
Title Alternative Approaches to Measure Web Site Audiences
Author Robinsak, M., Batagelj, Z.
Year 2002
Access date 02.04.2004
Abstract The topic of this presentation is web site audiences measurement. In the markets where web marketing and advertising budgets spent on the Net are large enough, methods similar to peoplemeters in case of TV measurements are usually used. IN such cases Internet users - panelists - have software applications installed on their computers that are monitoring Internet traffic from their computers. The data are sent to servers located at research organizations in real-time and so also analyzed. Alternative methods can also be used: (1) traditional surveys and (2) technological, mostly server based measurements. Both of them can be (and are widely) criticized. The reasons behind that are mostly low understanding of survey research and too high expectations that measurements are actually not needed since the Internet is highly track able.
There are also known limitations of these ’traditional’ methods. Survey based methods have limitations because they are based on respondents memory what results that web pages with higher recognition (known brands) get higher scores, while non-branded or new sites get lower scores. On the other side, technical - server based methods have problems of users identifications, what is usually connected with cookie problems, multiple users on the same computer and firewall, proxy problems.
In not so rich markets (small countries and countries with low purchasing power) there is not enough money on the market to run these sophisticated panel surveys. Therefore ’traditional’ methods, generally not well accepted by the Internet industry should be used. There is an additional phenomena present in Slovenia, web sites are mostly run by enthusiasts, mostly people from IT industry that even less familiar with survey research methods, media research methods in general, and therefore very suspicious.
In April 2002 an alternative approach of measuring web site audiences was used for the first time. It combined technical measurement using so called ”pixels”, web surveys to get demographical and other respondents data, and parallel telephone control survey. All three methods of measurement were used together for the final results: 14-days reach estimates, demographical profiles of web pages evaluated and overlap among pages. The results are available in software application.
The results with methodology explained in details (Slovenian) can be found at http://wwwsi.cati.si.
Access/Direct link Homepage - conference (abstract)
Year of publication2002
Bibliographic typeConferences, workshops, tutorials, presentations
