Will ViziSense break Google's Monopoly ..

..in determining Real Estate Value of smaller sites?

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Getting accurate traffic data has always been one of the biggest challenges faced by online marketing personnel – both advertisers and market analysts. Though cost per click methods seemed to have solved the Web 1.0 problem of over/under valued rates of real estate, it still does not provide any information on the quality or the relevance of the traffic. Search giants like Google uses an additional parameter called the “Quality Score” to correct ad pricings but smaller sites do not have the resources to do so on their own. Hence their only source of revenue is to use Google Adsense (or similar products). While this appears to be a convenient system of revenue generation, its still does not fetch them the perfect market value. And they also end up sharing precious revenue with a third party. Worse still are the marketers who end up shooting in the dark at places Google Adwords takes them based on text keywords alone!

Now imagine a scenario where traffic data of almost every website in the world is publicly available. A year ago Google Ad Planner was launched, which contained Google Analytics like information for most companies. But unfortunately demographics are still unavailable for websites from many countries, including those from India. This is where ViziSense, an audience measurement offering from the VC backed Komli Media, makes its staggering presence felt. In India, at least! For example, lets take an online newspaper from a small city like Guwahati – 'The Assam Tribune'. Reports from Alexa or Comscore could give advertisers an idea about the traffic to the site. However it was impossible for advertisers to know exactly how qualified this traffic is with relevance to their product and their marketing objectives. But not any more! One small tab in ViziSense and you have all the data you need.

(click figure to enlarge)

Fig: ViziSense data for "AssamTribune.com" (click here to see summary page)

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However, one word of caution, data from Vizisense may not be 100% accurate. ViziSense uses a combination of the panel data it receives from thousands of users and the ViziSense Tag that a publisher can place on their website, to derive conclusions about a site's audience. Which means that the data is just an estimation or at best an extrapolation. This is not a major problem, as it would be solved with time when other companies bring out their own audience measurement tools and there will be a corrective comparison of data from all such tools.

But for now, Vizisense is no less than revolutionary. Not only because it brings out traffic details for even small Indian websites hence empowering them beyond contemporary possibilities but also because it has shown an alternative to keyword based marketing. With a few more tools entering the market, the monopoly of Adsense/Adwords in determining real estate value of any site would most definitely be broken. And needless to say marketers, consumers and publishers alike, will benefit in the process.

Cheers!

ps: also read What is ViziSense? and the ViziSense Methodology.

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