Even though our business is helping B-to-B companies grow through effective and smart communications, it does make sense for us to pay attention to what’s going on with some things in the consumer world.

In the November issue of Consumer Insight, an E-Newsletter put out by the audience research firm, Nielsen, there’s an interesting article titled How to Measure an Online Audience: Change is the Only Constant. It goes on to talk about where we are evolving in online audience measurement. One item really stood out in this lengthy piece. It relates to what they believe is the best engagement metric for Web 2.0 sites. Scott Ross, Director of Product Marketing for Nielsen Online’s NetView summed it up, “’Total Minutes’ is the best engagement metric in this initial stage of Web 2.0 development, not only because it ensures fair measurement of Web sites using RIA (Rich Internet Applications – RIA Primer PDF) and streaming media but also of web environments that have never been well served by page view (Internet applications.)

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Ratings Council (MRC) – along with advertisers, site operators, and measurement services are currently working to define new audience standards for measuring the audience of sites making use of RIA technologies and all agree - a measure of total time spent will be a key metric in Internet audience measurement for the future.

So in addition to traditional measures: net audience (number of people who saw a site and still a key measure of “tonnage”) and page views (in my view, a much less valuable measure as the industry moves from the Web 1.0 to the Web 2.0 world), are you integrating total time spent as a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of your Web 2.0 site?