Come for the Ride!

Let me begin this post by saying I love Quantcast for analytics! I love how the service doesn’t charge $50K or $10K a seat to access its metrics. I love the charts, graphs and user interface they came up with. I also love how it lets the webmaster setup direct measurement so its data falls in line with internal Google Analytics reporting. (Unlike reporting served by Alexa, Compete and ComScore which are pure speculation as far as I can tell.)

With that said, we simply have not found a purpose for tracking, reporting and sharing all of this great data after two years of direct measurement. Ultimately the data can be useful for media buyers but to be honest, I don’t think media buyers are using this information when they are contacting us. Furthermore, with AdSense doing so well in terms of its eCPM’s in the automotive vertical, I have not yet found an ad network or direct buyer who has used this information and tell me they can pay me a better rate by doing a better job of targeting our users.

As much as I love pretty graphs, there’s simply no reason for Quantcast to be here.

Here are some issues we’re seeing.

• We want to track and provide accurate stats but our competitors do not. Therefore, the best way to compare apples to apples is to simply stop tracking so we can all be on the same page/lie.
• Having all the data available publicly is great – but if your stats aren’t up to par, you may be terminating a lot of opportunities you didn’t even know existed. If you aren’t broadcasting your stats, potential advertisers may at least drop you a line to ask for them.
• Quantcast reports on your sub-domains separately. If you’re not an advanced user, your development environment URL may sometimes get broadcasted into the wild without your knowledge. That’s just bad…
• With Google now rumored to add site speed into its algorithm to determine who they favor in search results, Quantcast becomes an unnecessary ping. Though slightly less accurate, ultimately you can still get the same set of demographics and related sites data even if you aren’t “quantified.” I already have Google Analytics for internal tracking so why do I really need Quantcasts’ version?

So with that, we have now jumped off the Quantcast direct measurement train. While I love analytics and firmly believe you cannot make good calls without diving deep into the stats – Quantcast has always been more for the outsiders than our internal team. Perhaps all of this will work out one day when everyone decides to share… in the meantime, we are closing the doors on our buffet of stats.