Glossary
Engaged time
The time a user actively interacts with content, such as scrolling or clicking, as distinct from a page simply staying open.
Engaged time is the amount of time a user actively interacts with content, such as scrolling, clicking, or keeping a video in focus, as distinct from the total time a page or app happened to be open.
Measurement typically relies on tracking active browser tab focus, mouse or touch activity, and scroll events, discarding time when a page was left open in a background tab. This differs from a simple session duration or average session duration metric, which counts elapsed time between the first and last event of a session regardless of whether the user was actually paying attention throughout.
Publishers and product teams use engaged time as a more honest proxy for genuine interest than pageviews or raw time on page, and it feeds into broader attention metrics and content engagement analysis. It is closely related to watch time for video specifically. The main pitfall is that engaged-time tracking methods vary between analytics tools, so figures are best compared within the same tool over time rather than benchmarked across different platforms.
Last reviewed September 22, 2026