Web analytics, web metrics, and how to use them to track and improve conversions

Niche Social Networks - I was reading about Making Social Media Work for You – Be Crafty in my friend, Valeria Maltoni's Conversation Agent, yesterday and would have posted on this earlier but I've been so busy and exhausted after Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in DC this week that I literally had no time to post to this blog at all...and that's rare for me as I love to post here.

I was interested in knowing how advertising would fare on a niche social network so I consulted the Social Networking Goes Niche article in BusinessWeek earlier this year and found this statement on page 2 of the article:

"..The sites that commend the highest figures per ad impression are typically those that can tell the advertiser something about their audiences' likely spending habits. Sites focused on shared interests allow advertisers to better target their messages."

"...itLinkz says advertisers are paying more each time their ads are viewed on his site than on more general social networks. Advertisers, he says, are paying double-digit figures for every 1,000 times their ad is viewed. "

While not a true study, the statement above suggests that if a niche social network is large enough and the niche segment is responsive to online advertising (not all are) then you should get double or triple the click through rate on advertising through the niche social network group than elsewhere........ but we still don't have a comprehensive survey to prove it one way or the other.

One thing that struck me on about the Jim Long Interview about Crafty Nation was the term "episodic video" which is actually one of the Social Media Standards the Web Analytics Association plans to draft standards for over the next several months (actually, episodic online video and episodic online audio don't seem to have any members of my social media committee who want to tackle these two standards yet - so we're working of Virtual Reality and Social Networks along with Blog Standards first ...at least, that's how it's looking right now ....we get started in a week or so).

Episodic Online Video...what is it?   To me, it's a basically a TV show or that's released on a regular basis.  I guess, by those standards, "Heroes" could be considered Episodic Online Video - even though it appears on NBC first.

The idea of targeting Episodic Online Video to a Niche Market, in this case, the "Craft" Market (which I don't know anything about) is brilliant:

"....We’re building Crafty Nation (currently rebuilding with more sophisticated and robust social networking platform), combining social networking, episodic, editorially driven video, and blogging, all designed to celebrate and give voice to the rich tapestry of craft. "

One thing that I'm wondering about .... does online advertising (their revenue model) work better for a Niche Audience than it would for Search Marketing, in general, and are their any studies that have been done that compares the advertising on a Niche Social Network to advertising elsewhere?

I would think that advertising, well targeted, perhaps mixed with Behavioral Targeting (think Tacoda) would work very well in a Niche Social Network - provided the audience is large enough and the advertising is tuned to that Niche Audience.

But I don't know for sure because I haven't seen any study comparing Niche Social Network Advertising (especially "invite only - white label type social networks) to advertising on blog, online newspaper, AdSense publisher - and I think that would be a good thing to have case studies on.