BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
27 Dec 2006

Fred Wilson added the death of pageviews to his ongoing list of things to look out for in 2007 (previous ones being social search and broadband internet video.

Fred joins a list of people who include Steve Rubel, Evan Williams, Darren Rowse, and many others.

Sometimes, “thinkers” are ahead of the curve and offer a lot of insight into things that in theory make sense, but in practice do not.  I certainly do not want to be on the other side of a debate with either Mr. Wilson or Rubel, but as someone who has spent years interacting with media planners and buyers, I ask: if the page view dies, what do you expect to be the glue that holds advertising on the Web together?

Can’t be widgets, now can it?  Better not.  The not so secret secret in online advertising is that pageviews do not mean a thing about, well, anything.  But the flip side is that pageviews remain what determines the formulas that decide how much is spent on which sites. 

Flat fee sponsorships are not going to increase in prominence, they will remain important, but pageviews provide a safety net to advertisers.  Pageviews are directly related to ad impressions, after all.

Clicks, you mention?  Clicks are great but no self respecting publisher will only embrace clicks.  Publishing is a labor intensive and risky proposition and (yes, I’m biased) publishers expect to be paid even if someone does not click on your ads.  It’s in our interest to ensure that people do click, and even buy, but our core competency is creating compeling content.

Media planning (I’m not knocking media planners here, I am outlining the imperfect art that is media planning and buying) is notoriously limited because everyone has checks and balances and “cover your ass” checklists to satisfy, but at least, pageviews help remove a lot of the uncertainty.

It’s never this simple: but all factors being equal: more people coming to your site, the more unique users you should have.  The more people who come to your site, the more pageviews you have, and the more pageviews you have, then the more ad impressions you generate.  The system works because when a site tries to inflate pageviews, readers get tired and go elsewhere.  Is the system perfect?  Of course not.

I am all for Fred Wilson and company complaining about the system, but man, if there is one thing that has proven to work online it’s online advertising.  And if online advertising has worked, it’s because things like ad impressions have created a somewhat simple system.

I still find myself explaining the nuances of unique users, pageviews, clicks, ad impressions, frequency capping and what not, for the love of all things holy, let’s leave the widgets to the geek crowd (proverbially speaking folks, don’t hack our sites) and allow the mainstream revolution onto the Web to continue.

But, for that happen, we need simplicity, not perfection.