15 seconds of engagement as a simple content metric

Time on page is a familiar metric for content success, although it’s obvious that a page can be left open with no engagement happening. inPowered, the AI-driven content marketing, has proposed a minimum 15 seconds of engagement as optimal, and is reporting positive business outcomes.

Post CPC/CPM metrics. The intention is to get away from vanity metrics or meaningless total traffic reporting, and focus on visitors who are actually engaged with a piece of content. Data is used to drive a post-click customer journey, with AI making recommendations for next best action.

AI-driven content distribution, including re-targeting the 15 second-plus visitors, is said by inPowered to show superior ROI to DSP and ad-network buys.

Case studies. The claims are supported by several case studies. For Travel Nevada, inPowered use the 15 second engagement model to send interested visitors a CTA, directing them to a landing page to further engage with the website. The result was a doubling of average time spent on site over the benchmark, and an increase from 1.5 to 2.28% on click-thru to another article of video.

For a major financial brand, adopting inPowered’s metric for a blog saw an increase from 14 to 95 seconds average time spent on site, and an increase of around 8% in positive impact, as measured by content intelligence solution Knotch.

inPowered won an ANA B2 Award for Best Use of AI/Machine Learning last month.

Why we care. A lot of work has gone into using AI to analyse digital behavior and make content recommendations based on it. Being able to target and re-target website visitors who actually care about the content will drive better results.

About The Author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech Today. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.