What does "dwell time" actually mean?
In his column "What does... actually mean?", Benno Maggi looks at terms from the marketing and communications sector. This time he deals with the term "dwell time".
What an inviting word! It describes the quantification of the time spent or staying in a particular place. The word is so inviting that it should confidently be used more in marketing: for example, as the length of time spent in person with a customer. Or as a dwell time that becomes a treat when observing people or nature for new ideas. Or as dwell time invested in a non-job-related conversation with a co-worker. In short: any dwell time that doesn't take place on a smartphone or in front of a screen. Because there it is frighteningly high.
Who doesn't know this great horror when, on Monday morning, it is ruthlessly shown where we have been again the last seven days and how much time we have spent on it. The screentime report. It mercilessly reveals the time spent in the individual apps on the smartphones.
Don't you know it? Make sure you do. It's to your mental health what a pedometer is to your physical health. What good are 10,000 steps a day if you spend hours wandering through social media at the same time - with no time or sense of time? But what does wandering mean here? Scrolling through social media is more like trying to climb up a slippery, slightly curved wall of messages while constantly sliding down. Always hoping to discover a slightly better, funnier or more relevant message. Hours fly by that we could actually be using more sensibly. For hiking, for example. It's supposed to be wonderful, especially in the fall.
Time as currency
Screentime - or dwell time - is hated on the smartphone, but very popular in agencies' online reporting and marketing departments' internal reporting meetings. Example: If you decide to end your dwell time in this column now, there would be consequences. For me, not for you. Because in addition to the number of clicks, the length of time spent on a website, an article or even a column is also measured. And that's what you get paid for. And if this dwell time is not long enough, you're in trouble. Then there's trouble - or no money. After all, along with access and bounce rates, dwell time is what really counts in the digital world.
Even if the reports are full of further figures that usually no one understands and only a few are interested in. In the end, it's all about whether what advertisers and media professionals produce is of interest to the target audience. Are you still there? That makes me happy. For you and for me. Because statistically they increase their time for information gathering and hopefully decrease the time for nonsense at the same time. But maybe it's both. The main thing is that you pay for it. If not with money, then with the data that you have just left on this website and/or your smartphone. And that is processed into reports, analyzed and often misinterpreted. Thank you for your attention.
* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.
