Mmmmm .... Pageviews, Ad Impressions
Anyone who knows me, knows I live and die with the Red Sox, which means I also live and die with Red Sox coverage. And therefore every time I'm jammed into an 11-page slideshow to read a playoff preview for my favorite team ... a little piece of me dies.
Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography / Flickr
And it sparks questions like:
+ Why is this story taking so long to load?
+ Why can't I scan this article and separate what I know from what I don't?
+ Why do I need to wait for a new photo and page to reload with each new paragraph?
+ Wait a minute ... why I am clicking through a slideshow in the first place?
The answer is: The publisher that created this piece was not thinking about me or any other reader for that matter. They were thinking like Homer Simpson does about a donut -- "Mmmm ... 11 pageviews. (drooling noise) 11x the ad impressions ... mmmm."
Well the post below is a bang-on take of how some sites have become gluttons for ad impressions and pageviews at the expense of the user and the advertiser. I agree a story that features a one-graph lead to another site's story stinks (see my previous post "Google, Put A Stop To Keyword News). On the other hand, I do think top-10 lists and photo galleries have value when they're created to inform or entertain the user. But when they're generated solely to pump up metrics and ad impressions ... not so much. Shelby Bonnie blames the CPM, but we need to take some responsibility as well.
At some point, publishers decide that if all clients care about is impressions, then OK, we’ll give them impressions. The output is an industry that overproduces shallow, superficial, commoditized impressions. Why do we have so many bad sites that republish the same junky content–content that’s often made by machines or $1-per-post contractors? Why do sites intentionally try to get us to turn lots of pages with tons of top 10 lists,photo galleries,
The ironic kicker to this systematic approach to pumping out low-grade pageviews and ad impressions is that it punishes the two groups of people that sites are desperate to please -- users and advertisers. When an advertiser pays for an impression, there's a reasonable assumption that the impression will 1) be seen when the page loads and 2) the user will likely spend more than 1 second on that page. And for those consuming this type of content, are they likely to return for a second helping of this? I doubt it.
To me, this approach treats users and advertisers as disposable commodities that need to be replaced once they discover the limited value in the content or ad presentation. But there is an alternative -- accept the tradeoff of lower metrics/impressions for a user that shows more loyalty and is more engaged by well-crafted content that ... wait for it, here it comes ... that displays an ad users are more inclined to click on. After all, isn't that what users and advertisers really wanted in the first place?
I think it's time we started measuring the actions and behaviors that our customers and clients value -- and build content that drives those metrics. But for right now, I gotta go -- I'm only two-thirds of the way clicking through my Red Sox playoff preview.
