A New Way to Measure "Sharing"

 AddThis has launched a new way for publishers to track the sharing that happens in its simplest form, namely copying and pasting a URL from the address bar and then sharing it out to a social network, email or instant message.

For AddThis, which is owned by Clearspring, that could represent a huge new trove of data that the company can provide to web publishers.

Clearspring CEO Hooman Radfar says that the company has “seen up to 10 times greater sharing from the address bar versus the sharing buttons.”

With a network that now reaches more than 1.2 billion unique users per month across 9 million sites, that’s a ton of sharing that had previously been going uncounted.

Measurement tools of that sort are important for media properties, as what used to be called "pass along readership" can allow publishers to claim bigger audiences, which then allows higher advertising rates.

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