Three Metrics for Measuring User Engagement with Online Media: Case Example YouTube

This technical report introduces three metrics of user engagement with online media. They are Views per Votes, Views per Comments, and Dislike ratio. They are derived from established, publicly available, basic statistics. The paper includes case a study of popular videos to illustrate the characteristics of the measures. The study documents the range of observed values and their relationships. The empirical sample shows the three measures to be only weakly correlated with the original statistics despite the common numerators and denominators. Paper concludes by discussing future applications and the needs of the quantification of user interaction with new media services.