Re: UKNM: Page impressions - how many is good?

[neville clarke]

At 15:54 10/07/98 +0100, Nick at NewsNow Publishing wrote:

>I'm trying to establish what constitutes a decent number of impressions

>per month for a site. I've been told by some ad bureaus that a million is

the minimum in order to make decent money. Is this really the case?

>>Also, what is the value of collecting email addresses? If they are used

to gather more data on a site's users, what sort of information are

advertisers interested in?>>


1. Leaving the vexed question of data collection, spam and privacy on one

side for the moment, what is an impression? One visitor to your site may

visit ten pages and on the way clock up any number of 'impressions.' In

America there seems to be a consensus that the number of 'unique visitors'

per month is a significant number as is the number of pages 'seen' by each

such visitor. 


2. A thousand visitors a day each visiting ten pages would give a monthly

average total of 300.000 'page impressions.' Are the 'ad bureaus' Nick

refers to saying that a site needs to clock a minimum of over 3,300

visitors a day "in order to make decent money?"  


3. Another factor must be the quality of the visitor. To a large extent

that will be determined by the nature of the site. Advertisers in the press

make assumptions about the demographics of the Sun readership as against

that of the Financial Times or of the Butterfly Spotters Guide against The

Naturist. Some are worth more than others. There is no reason why the same

principle should not apply to web sites.


4. Is it not time that definitions of terms such as 'impression', 'page

view' and 'cpm' were adopted industry-wide? It would benefit advertisers

and their agencies and web publishers alike.


ps Any ideas how to make 'indecent money'?     


--

Neville Clarke


www.airwise.com

The Independent Airport and Air Travel Guide