Quantcast ratings

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Thu, 2007-08-23 at 00:46 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-08-21 at 18:44 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> >> Are we interested in this?
> >>
> >> http://www.quantcast.com/
> > 
> > What useful information does this provide us over server-based methods,
> > besides how popular we are compared to e.g. the NY Times?
> 
> The FAQ has more details but if you can trust the data, then there is a 
> lot more info than merely popularity.

After stripping out the verbosity and the marketing, here's what I came
up with:

Q: What does Quantcast do?

A: Quantcasts correlates website visits with demographic information
about households in the United States of America, and rates/ranks your
site compared to other sites.

Q: Why does Quantcast do this?

A: So that you can more accurately tune your advertising.

So now the question is whether or not any of this information is
*useful*. I say no, for several points:

1) Fedora's audience is global. Only looking at US demographics is
likely to be an academic exercise at best.

2) Fedora doesn't target a specific demographic. I realize that the
"What is Fedora's Target" thread didn't come to any true conclusion, but
I'm fairly sure that it isn't affluent 18-24 year olds, 35-44 year old
soccer moms, highly-educated minorities, or anything like that.

3) Fedora doesn't advertise. Therefore, any data that can help us tune
our advertising is wasted. See point 2.

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet at gmail.com>

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/attachments/20070822/178219b1/attachment.sig>