We have waited patiently for the web analytics companies to develop some consumption metric beyond page views.
It’s worth thinking about yesterday’s comScore news announcing daily visits, since it could become part of our tracking and selling parlance. However this metric doesn’t tell the full consumption story.
If content changes a lot, then you’d expect higher frequency of visits. If someone watches his favorite re-run online, then frequency should be lower while engagement is far higher. If another person listens to her favorite online radio station while at the office, the frequency and engagement could both be lower than average.
Of course, comScore already reports statistics by industry, which will help daily visits make more sense. It’s important to track visits data based on some understanding of the media type as well — even if there’s a need to adjust their data collection to do so.