Why Sharing Is The Best Way To Measure A Web Site's Value

This article is sponsored by ShareThis.

When advertisers decide where to run campaigns, they may look at web sites that fit a certain demographic or psychographic — 33-year-old men who root for the Knicks or tween girls who love One Direction, for example.

But demographics alone don't accurately convey a web site's value. The more important question is how much do a site's readers share its content with their friends and social networks?

ShareThis, which tracks sharing across 95 percent of the Internet, regards the act of sharing as a powerful indicator of site relevance. After all, the best content is handpicked by readers, then shared across Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social platforms.

The ShareThis Social Quality Index (SQI) analyzes this data to create a universal measure of quality that can be applied across all sites, regardless of size. SQI assigns sites a score from 1 to 200 by evaluating metrics such as outbound shares, inbound click-back traffic, and page views.

For advertisers, the SQI can be a powerful targeting tool. When Wendy's, for instance, was promoting its new menu items, the fast-food chain asked ShareThis for help in finding the right places to run its campaign. Drawing from its network of more than 2 million publisher sites, ShareThis pinpointed those generating the most social activity around food and drink, as measured by SQI.

Thanks to ShareThis' targeting efforts, click-through on the campaign increased by 66 percent, newsletter sign-ups by 234 percent, and store look-ups by 236 percent. 

When people read an article or watch a video they enjoy, they share it. ShareThis translates this behavior into useful information for advertisers, allowing them to target sites with high engagement and content that's relevant to the consumers they want to reach.

Learn more about the ShareThis Social Quality Index (SQI) >>