The title might be a bit provocative, but the topic is important for companies which want to insure their website is a profit center rather than a cost center. The number of page views tracked by a web analytics system is often a weak indicator of website monetization potential. With the advent of monetization programs such as Google’s AdSense, the specific content of a web page has become much more telling in this regard. Let’s see why.
In this article we will restrict ourselves to advertising as the monetization tool.
The success factors for the monetization of a website depend on the advertising model used. The traditional approach is to sell banner space, historically at a cost per 1000 impressions (CPM). In this model, the greater the number of page views, the better. Life is all rather straight forward. Yet over time many advertisers have become more sophisticated, offering to pay just for the traffic actually received, e.g. the click-through model where the site carrying the ad receives a fee only if a user clicks on the banner, arriving at the advertiser’s site.
The number of people willing to click is determined by the number of page views (the total opportunities for a visitor has to click on the banner) and the attractiveness of the banner in the context of a page.
In this case, a prominent appealing banner may be displayed less often than an ugly or less prominent one on a more visited page, and yet earn more by achieving a higher click-through to impressions rate.
Our considerations become even more complicated when Google’s AdSense is used for website monetization. In the Google AdSense model, the hosting site or publisher only earns money when an ad is clicked. But the value of an ad to a site varies dynamically based on the competition for the keywords specified by the advertiser. These keywords must thematically match the content of the page used to display the ad. A website that has very heterogeneous content, such as a newspaper or a generalist site, may carry ads that are worth a few cents on some articles and ads that are worth several dollars (or Euro) on other articles.
Paradoxically a page with few visitors can be worth much more in site monetization than a well trafficked page.
Consider the example of a page concerning tourism in Sardinia. The tourism industry is highly competitive and tourism operators (car rental, hotels, airlines) are willing to pay a lot to find potential customers. For our example let’s imagine that there are advertisers willing to pay €4 on average for each click (the value for a prospect or potential customer). Compare this with a page which covers the battle waged by the record companies against the download of free mp3 files. It’s quite difficult to convince someone looking for something which is free to pay for that thing, especially when they don’t perceive a significant difference in value. Consequently, there is less interest and thus competition for these keywords. Let’s assume advertisers are offering 20 cents on average for clicks on ads with these keywords. To visualize the implications, let’s also say that both ads are clicked for 5% of pages viewed, the page on Sardinia tourism is only seen 700 times and the page on mp3 downloads is viewed 10,000 times. Despite that this page is seen 14 times the page on tourism, the page earns 40% less:
| Web page concerning | Page Views | Ad Value | Click-throughs | Page Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sardinian Tourism | 700 | € 4 | 5 % | € 140 |
| free mp3 downloads | 10,000 | € 0.2 | 5 % | € 100 |
Although this is a made-up example, the basic concept remains valid: as web advertising tools have become more sophisticated, each web page has its own value, a value which can vary significantly from one page to another. The actual monetization value of a web page depends significantly on the specific page content rather than the absolute number of times viewed.
Yes, the number of website page views is still important. But, as in life, quality is often more important than quantity.
Web marketers might need to pay attention not only to page views tracked by a web analytics tool, but also consider if the traffic can be successfully monetized or not.
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