Introduction

WE KNOW THAT MEDIA HAS AN IMPACT ON THE PUBLIC, SHAPING DISCUSSION and action on important issues. How can we use data to trace these connections from the stories that appear in print, online or in broadcast, to how members of the public consume, subscribe, amplify and contribute to the conversation? 

This guide is the first in the USC Media Impact Project’s Understanding Media Metrics series of publications. The purpose of the series is to help media organizations understand digital measurement tools and the data they can provide to help illuminate parts of the process of media impact that occur online. 

We’ll start with looking at a few basic metrics of a news site, including the following:

  • Basic site metrics: Users, sessions, pageviews, bounce rate
  • Looking at data by day versus data by week
  • Segmenting by geography and/or traffic source or channel (e.g., organic search, direct, referring sites and links from social media)
  • Comparing the basic metrics of one story versus another ​

A Note On Digital Metrics Tools

This guide uses Google Analytics to illustrate the types of software tools used to gather and report metrics data. Each digital media platform has its own metrics and tools. 

Data from one tool usually can’t be combined with data from another. Also, data from one organization sometimes can’t be compared with another, even if both are using the same tool.

  • Each tool uses different methodologies and sometimes different terms.
  • Unlike Nielsen ratings or Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers, newsrooms can customize the way data is gathered. 
  • The data gathered by a news organizations for its own internal use is proprietary and differs from data gathered by external sources such as comScore.

Google Analytics, Adobe SiteCatalyst (formerly Omniture), Chartbeat and WebTrends are just some of the free or paid tools a newsroom can use. All of the reports from these tools are designed to be used by non-technical users.