网络“注意力经济”新标准：吸引点击不再是王道

    能吸引匆匆忙忙的记者注意力的事情不多。有趣的独家新闻算是一种。呼啸而过的救护车大概算另外一种。（这里特指冲在危险第一线的记者。）而对于绝大多数网络作者和编辑们而言，能够吸引他们注意力的，则是Chartbeat指针像催眠一样的跳动，因为它能显示出某一时刻有哪些人正在阅读其文章。

    提供网站实时分析服务的纽约公司Chartbeat，在短短几年内，客户便覆盖了80%的顶级在线出版商的网站，包括《财富》的英文网站。它改变了媒体对待流量数据的方式。很早之前，网络媒体第二天才能得到数据（页面访问量、独立用户等），了解文章的受欢迎程度。后来变成了只需等待一个小时。如今有了Chartbeat，网络媒体几乎可以即时得到数据。看着Chartbeat控制面板上的“同步”指针，就像通过核磁共振扫描盯着一个人的心脏跳动一样。

    这种方式已经改变了出版商应对数据的方式。读者肯定注意到了。头条的标题被不断地精心调整。次要文章的推广时间被定得更加精确。当然，受在线显示广告根据浏览量而非兴趣付费的商业模式驱动，你会发现那些“诱饵”内容也更吸引人点击了。。（证据一：这篇文章就使用了“吸引眼球”的标题。）

    这种基本模式一直令人头痛不已，所以，你会经常看到 类似“一位女性如何在20分钟内减掉一磅”这样的标题，而其实里面的内容你或许已经在其他地方看过。标题一直是吸引读者注意力的主要工具，但现在的模式却正鼓励出版商极尽夸张之能事，以最大可能吸引读者。

    与很多人一样，Chartbeat公司CEO托尼•海勒相信还有更好的方法。上个月，他的公司宣布“注意力标准”首度受到媒介视听率评介委员会（Media Rating Council）的认可衡量标准，这个标准既不是看点击率也不是看加载时间。而是贯穿广告与内容两方面，或许能够有效地打击言过其实的网络文章标题。

    在出席芝加哥在线新闻协会（Online News Association）会议期间，海勒接受电话采访时表示：“我们并非想要根据加载页面的情况给广告计价，而是想解决两个问题：你是否可以准确测量能够抓取的注意力的具体数量？如何计算这些注意力的价值？如果你能做到这两点，品牌就可以更有效地分配资本。而在出版商方面，从经济角度来说，所有投资高质量内容的人，都有理由这样做。”

    出版商一直在寻找更好的方法测量注意力，但多年来始终无法就具体方式达成共识。海勒说道：“你想了解什么是高质量的内容。如果你能让读者点一下标题就进入顶部500个像素位置含有广告的页面，那么你投资高质量内容的动机是什么？你只需要编写一个聪明的标题就可以了。但如果你能让读者在那个页面停留，让他们一直阅读下去从而使广告有机会发挥作用，这会与前者有很大的不同。55%的网页浏览量得到的注意力长度不足15秒。如果能够找到一种方法，更好地证明注意力，你就可以提高广告费率。”

    海勒的建议是对在线广告行业的一次巨大变革，虽然在线广告业一直在努力完善现有的模式，但却很少能产生全新的想法。海勒说道：“我们将开始把注意力转移到品牌广告，即向消费者传递信息，而不是宣传一项活动或直接响应式的推销。品牌方对直接响应标准的使用走入了误区。未来，这种情况将逐渐改变。”

    这意味着，未来出版商将失去粗制滥造所谓点击诱饵的动力。海勒说道，未来的路非常艰难，随着出版商与广告公司开始接受新标准，变化将会不均衡地展开。但这是我们第一次看到如此明确的方向。他说：“访客的默认行为不是阅读每一个字，而是离开。”(财富中文网)

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    There aren’t many things that can capture a busy journalist’s attention. A juicy scoop, for one. The flashing lights of an ambulance may be another. (We tend to be the types that run toward danger.) And, for the vast majority of those writers and editors that work online, the hypnotic bounce of the Chartbeat needle telling them who’s reading their story at that very moment.

    The New York-based company, which offers real-time analytics for websites, has in just a few years worked its code into the websites of 80% of the top online publishers, including the one you’re reading right now. It has changed the way they react to traffic data. It used to be that you’d have to wait until the next day for data (pageviews, unique users, et cetera) to understand how stories performed. Then it became the next hour. With Chartbeat, it’s nearly instantaneous. A look at the “concurrents” needle on the Chartbeat dashboard is like staring at a person’s beating heart during an MRI scan.

    This dynamic has changed the way publishers react. You’ve no doubt noticed it. Headlines are refined on the fly. Secondary stories are promoted with more precise timing. And, of course, the bait becomes more click-y, fueled by an online display advertising business model that rewards views instead of interest. (Exhibit A: The headline used, quite tongue in cheek, on this story.)

    The underlying model has been the most troublesome, and it’s the primary reason why “Six Totally Shocking, Crazy, Outrageous Predictions About the War Against the Islamic State” and “Watch a Woman Attempt to Lose One Pound in 20 Minutes” are used to headline stories you’ve probably already seen elsewhere. The headline has always been a chief tool to grab a reader’s attention, but today’s model rewards publishers who exaggerate to reach far beyond their target audience.

    Like most people, Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile believes there’s a better way. On Monday, his company announced the first-ever accreditation by the Media Rating Council for metrics around attention, rather than clicks or load time. The accreditation spans both ads and content, and may prove effective in beating back the over-promising online headline.

    “Instead of trying to value ads on the fact that the page loaded with the ad on it, it’s: Can you accurately measure how long the actual amount of attention you’re able to capture and then value it?” he said during a phone call Friday from the Online News Association conference in Chicago. “If you can do that, brands will more effectively allocate capital. On the publisher side, all the people who have invested in quality content actually have an economic reason to do so.”

    Publishers have long sought a better way to measure attention, but have for years disagreed on how to specifically do it. “You want to know and understand what’s quality content,” Haile said. “If you can get someone to click on a headline and come through to a page where the ad loads in the top 500 pixels, what’s the incentive for you to invest in quality content? You can just write a clever headline. But if you can keep them on that page and keep them reading so that ad has a chance to work, there’s a very great difference. Fifty-five percent of all pageviews on the web get less than 15 seconds of attention. If you’re dealing with something where you can prove attention better, you can charge more.”

    What Haile is suggesting is a massive change to the online advertising industry, which has done much to refine its existing model but accomplished little in the way of a full rethink. “We’ll begin moving our attention to brand advertising—that is, advertising that communicates a message to you, rather than prompting an action, or direct response,” he said. “The brand side has been using direct-response metrics for the wrong purposes. That’s going to change over time.”

    Which means in time publishers won’t be incentivized quite as much to churn out so-called clickbait. The road ahead is rocky, Haile said, and change will be unevenly distributed as publishers and ad agencies begin to embrace the new standard. But the direction forward is, for the first time, clear. “A visitor’s default behavior isn’t to read every word,” he said. “It’s to leave.”