Unless you have had your head buried under a rock for some time, you should have heard about the rise of Web 2.0 and AJAX-driven web applications.

AJAX is collection of technologies and stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, which in plain English means that you can update part of a web page without having to reload it. The exponential rise of content-rich sites such as Flickr, Google Maps, Google Suggest, YouTube, Facebook and Gmail all employ AJAX technology in varying degrees.

Site metrics & paid-for advertising

From an advertising point of view this throws a big spanner in the works. Traditionally the staple metrics of internet advertisers were page impressions and unique visitors. Internet properties were valued in terms of the amount of traffic they attracted. Advertising campaigns revolved around CPM (cost per thousand), a model built upon the notion that each time a page was served up your banner/ad would also be served. The problem now is that as the popularity of AJAX increases, both existing and new sites are finding it harder to measure traffic to their sites and in turn maintain advertising revenues.

To quote Julian Zilberbrand, associate director, digital operations, MediaVest, “if you are a publisher that is really focused on user experience, [Ajax] does make sense, but it potentially severely limits the ad opportunities you have” (Media Week, 02/04/2007).

An AP report discussed Nielsen//NetRatings and its measurement future. They are expected to announce an end to rankings based on page views and are “planning to publish a new ‘total time spent’ metric” (Media Week, 02/04/2007). This is a step in the right direction, but Nielsen//NetRatings ‘total time spent’ metric might not give us the whole picture, as there is a notion that web users are becoming more efficient in their online activities, and AJAX applications are fuelling this increase in efficiency. So whereas a web user might have traditionally visited 2 or 3 sites to view content, they can now use a RSS news aggregator to view the same content much faster, without even launching their web browser.

The notion of the page impression is also becoming less important because of the widgetisation of web pages, where small pieces of AJAX functionality are the point of interaction with the user, rather than them clicking on the ‘next page’ link to continue their user journey. This means we need new tools such as ajax metrics to track user behaviour and from an advertising point of view, serve up appropriate content to the right portion of the page.

This is a new challenge to the metrics market place, and there are no hard and fast rules as yet, but expect a shake up of the traditional paradigm over the coming months.

SEO

Hand-in-hand with the paid-for advertising is search engine optimisation. AJAX also directly effects how your site is viewed by search engines. By implementing more JavaScript-powered interactivity in your site you are in turn increasing the barriers to your content, (as far as search engines are concerned). But this doesn’t have to be the case, if you employ a web standards and accessible approach to web development then you can still provide the necessary structure for search engines to index your site’s content.

Check out more about web standards and accessibility:

• http://www.webstandards.org/
• http://diveintoaccessibility.org/
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• http://www.w3c.org/
• http://www.alistapart.com/

This article was written by Ben Ellis, but was based on discussion and ideas that come out of chats with Simon Price, the search guru here at Crayon.