Return on Audience, complementary metric for measuring digital media performance

When we talk about online content businesses, we rarely see metrics combining our costs and revenues just in terms of audience. We have ROI as a general metric for measuring a total investment cost against revenues.

Recently, I am hearing more people talking on  ROA: return on audience.  This concept is not yet in wikipedia, and it still has only 17 entries in google, although it was probably an old concept for finance departments or “traditional” media.

Real Media says: “We can segment audiences so that they deliver the most value to you, and give you a return on audience that will make your CFO smile.” You can also find Microsoft using this concept in “Five Ways Publishers Are Increasing Their ROA (Return on Audience)”.

Many may think that ROA adds no value to ROI, but I think otherwise. If we consider ROA, return on audience, as revenues per investment to build an audience (as suggested in this comment) then we get to a complementary metric that considers audience costs as well as revenues. A digital media may not get ROI right now, but having positive ROA shows a healthy future. Even ROA  is just an application of ROI, it is an interesting metric for measuring online media sustainability. We will probably read an increasing number of analysis based in ROA.