Measuring online engagement is all about the BCP

Examining Behavioural Capture Points (BCP's) is a far more accurate way to judge audience engagement than looking at measures like session duration and page impressions, writes Komli's Andrew Reid.

In a vast ocean of consumer data, gigawatts of power are devoted to finding correlations or patterns in all the randomness.

The value of this investment comes from how successful these algorithms predict an individual’s reaction under certain media conditions, with varying degrees of confidence.

The more timely, the more diversified the data sources, the higher the chance of capturing that unique combination of circumstances that drive improved results with less cost.

In the context of publishing, one source of audience data that is highly applicable to algorithm ‘learning’ is what we call Behavioural Capture Points (BCP), and how BCPs correlate to site engagement, and for that matter, campaign performance.

At the risk of acronym overkill, a good media network (featuring guaranteed inventory) will sit on a Data Management Platform (DMP). This elegant piece of technology captures every action by every visitor on a site or network of sites. These actions would include links clicked, search terms used, video watched, content read and products purchased (or abandoned). The list goes on.

Every action is mapped as a BCP, which in turn gives the site a BCP score. This score can be used to validate the value of the publisher in terms of audience behavior and applying that data to a behavioral targeting campaign.

In 90 percent of cases, the BCP score for news and reference sites will sit between 20 and 50, while almost 100 percent of ecommerce sites carrying scores of more than 200.

As a pre-qualifier of a data-rich site, and as a contributor to the value of direct response marketing, the BCP score is fundamental, but does the score have a role to play in the context of brand advertising?

Yes, because the correlation between a BCP score and audience engagement is far stronger than what’s assumed when measures like average session duration or average page impressions are applied.

There’s simply no reason why an advertiser or agency should not query a publisher or network about their BCP score as a proxy for audience involvement, and as a corollary to that, brand association.

This is the potential of the BCP – providing a metric that quantifies ‘context’ – so when combined with reach and frequency, the BCP concept gives fresh impetus to the value of online branding.

This is an example of turning ‘big data’ into big results.

Examples of BCPs:

Andrew Reid is MD of Komli, Australia and New Zealand

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