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For those in the sports industry, you will have seen your connections on LinkedIn reflect upon 2022 with posts and articles highlighting success stories. Major competitions love to round up a tournament in a similar way.
‘X million views…’
‘Y million engagements…’
There are many ways to measure success; the most widely accepted unit is ‘views’ or ‘engagement’. Usually (but not always), all the views or engagements acquired across platforms are cumulated into one impressive number.
There is a reason for this: these units have been made easily accessible throughout social platforms. However, inconveniently, social platforms don’t calculate views and engagement with any single method. One view differs from the next, and no engagement is the same, so a cumulation of totals makes very little sense. A more significant problem than a simple inconvenience, views and engagement are the measure of perceived value.
The difference is not marginal. Some views and engagement have meaningful value, such as a 30-second intentional YouTube view, where you need to press ‘play’ and watch for 30 seconds, whilst other views (and sometimes engagements) are the same as a simple impression. On TikTok, the video only needs to appear on someone’s screen to be considered a view. Subsequently, these views are far easier to acquire.
👀 6.6 billion video views
📱 78.4 million visitors on web and app
🔤 Multi-lingual coverage and more!
The Men’s #T20WorldCup 2022 was the most digitally engaged ICC event ever 🎉
Details ➡️ https://t.co/WxOCzoXpwL pic.twitter.com/6Pd3UE9Di1
This isn’t an attack on Meta, Twitter, or TikTok – I have my opinions, but these platforms certainly have value, as do some of their metrics in the right context. The purpose of this article is to highlight that this significant nuance should be fully understood within a content strategy and user funnel. Baking a cake with different interpretations of the same unit of measurement would leave you with…something other than a cake. Another outcome shouldn’t be expected with your content strategy.
The most misleading calculation is engagement on Facebook and Instagram. Meta considers a three-second video autoplay as engagement – not just a view but engagement. There is no need to like or comment; just let it autoplay for three seconds in the corner of your screen. Clearly, this kind of engagement is barely an impression, never mind a view, but it is calculated as such. Furthermore, the engagement rate percentage is calculated by taking likes, comments and three-second autoplay views and dividing them by the reach of a post (which can often be very low – another problem), not the total following – driving inflated numbers that many are subsequently willing to pay more for.
Twitter has recently added a view count to tweets. Are they views? I suspect that they have just appeared in a feed.
The contrast between platforms is stark, but consider views or engagement within these big consolidated numbers might also be inside a rights holder’s owned and operated (O&O). A view might be the consumption of hours of premium content. Engagement could be the purchase of a jersey, match ticket, or access to coverage with hours in subsequent viewing time. These actions clearly shouldn’t carry the same value as a three-second autoplay.
It’s almost impossible to extrapolate useful conclusions from the big unqualified numbers that are so often shared. Especially so if they’re cumulative across platforms. The rabbit hole runs deep. How long are they viewing for? Are these viewers within your target market? Sport has an unprecedented total addressable market (TAM), but given you only have a slight chance to reach a fan who might translate into revenue, speaking to your (serviceable and obtainable market (SOM) has always been more critical.
The minor crime is that focusing on views and engagement misleads people that need a little help understanding. It is akin to keeping score and not knowing how many points are scored for a try vs a penalty, or a dunk vs a score ‘from downtown’, but cheering along nonetheless.
The greater crime is that (it suggests) some organisations are instead working towards and celebrating metrics with little worthwhile value. Views and engagement are often considered to be the extent of the marketer or content creator’s remit. However, that shouldn’t be the case, and it isn’t within forward-thinking organisations. Working together to define a shared, clear understanding of success metrics within the SOM to drive outcomes (such as ticket sales) and actual value (such as revenue) should be fundamental.
We don’t need to use the default calculation methods social platforms offer. A simple raw engagement rate calculation enables a better like-for-like comparison that can also be applied to the O&O. For example, comments, likes, and shares are divided by followers or users. Equally, you can find higher viewing time thresholds to report on views in your analytics; you just need to dig a little further.
Brace yourself, though. Whilst these are far more helpful to track progress, it’s not going to look as good as the inflated social numbers served so easily. Nevertheless, it is the first step to building an effective user engagement funnel. Ultimately, tracking something more worthwhile than views or engagement, such as activity in your O&O, revenue and data.
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