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. 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.