As AJAX, media, and other interactive technologies become more widespread online, it becomes harder and harder to track what users are doing online.  Marketers, publishers, and advertisers want to know this information to determine where to spend their advertising dollars.  But its hard to get accurate statistics on some of these stats that were developed before the popularity of interactivity spread.

In particular, the page view metric is often cited as out of down, inaccurate, and in need of replacement.  But, as of yet, no one has developed a measurement to take its place.  Compete, which tracks online metrics and monitors user habits, has created their own metric to complement existing numbers.

The measurement, called The Compete Attention 200, is designed to show the 200 sites that get the most attention.  Based on the amount of time that users spend at each website, the Attention 200 ranks websites as a percentage relative to the other sites on the list.

For example, MySpace tops the current list with 11.9%.  What that means is simple:  of all the time spent online by everyone in the world, Compete is saying MySpace captures almost 12% of that time.  Yahoo, in at number two, gets 8.5%, followed by MSN, eBay, and Google (in that order).

A couple of observations about The Compete Attention 200:

1. Only the top 7 sites garner 1% or more of our attention (Facebook is right on the border with 0.97%).  This goes to show how diversified our viewing habits are.  MySpace is the only double-digit site on the list.  And the bottom position, shared by 7 sites, is 0.036%.  Granted, in terms of worldwide users that's still a decent amount.
2. Sites with interactivity sit at the top of the list:  MySpace… Yahoo… eBay.  Yahoo, although number 2 in terms of search market share, beats out Google in this metric because of the shear volume of content available at its site.  Google can't compete in the content category.

I don't think this measurement will be replacing the page view metric any time soon (and I don't think that was Compete's goal anyway).  But it's still interesting to look at.  And it puts things into a different perspective for advertisers.  Sure… lots of people will see your ads on Google.  But they'll see them for longer at eBay.

And that's a perspective that I think a lot of advertisers don't always think about.