Key Web Metrics for Publishers
I’ve been talking with several publishers who have asked what are the key metrics they should be using to measure their web site business? Obviously, the number one metrics is revenue per month, but here are the key metrics that I like to use when measuring the health and growth of a web publishing business.
- Unique visitors per month – Even with the problems counting unique visitors, this is still a useful metric to guage the overall reach of a site. Just remember that cookie deletion is on the rise and the number of unique visitors you report is likely quite inflated over the real number of unique people that actually visit your site each month.
- Visits per month – As time goes by, I find myself relying on this metric more than unique visitors. Yes, it does count unique individuals more than once per month, but it is much more reliable that unique visitors. It is also a metric that I see more in use from web traffic audit bureaus because of its reliability.
- Page views per month – Yes, AJAX, Flash, and other similar technologies are complicating how page views are tracked, but in general, the impact is still relatively minor and this is a critical metric for publishers. At the end of the day, more page views equals more ad impressions that you can serve. And the more ad impressions (inventory) you have, the more revenue you can make. It should be every publisher’s goal to increase their page views per month.
- Page views per visit (PVPV) – I think this is a very under-used, but powerful stat. You can increase traffic (page views) to your site in one of three ways: get more people to come to your site, get them to come there more often, or get the ones that come to your site to look at more pages while they’re there. It’s a lot easier to people to look at more page views per visit than to get more people to come to your site and there are several tactics you can employ to increase PVPV, but that’s a topic for another post. Get this metric from your internal metrics system.
- Search engine saturation – SEO is just one method for increasing traffic to your site, but it’s one of the most critical for most publishers. You may have a lot of great content, but how much of it is being seen (indexed) by the search engines? To find this out, you can just type site:{yoursite.com} into Google. For example, site:iab.net, shows that the Internet Advertising Bureau has approx 1720 pages indexed in Google. Another great tool can be found at MarketLeap which will show you how many pages of your site Google, Yahoo, and MSN have listed in their index. Try it out and compare your results to your competitors. I’ll bet the site with the most search engine saturation has the most traffic…
- Search engine referals (organic) – It’s one thing to have your content listed in the search engines, but how many people (referals) is that content driving back to your web site? Check your metrics system each month to benchmark organic (non-paid) search engine referals to your site. Your goal is to increase this number.
- Revenue per month – As I said before, this is the bottom line for web sites. I definitely include all web-fulfilled revenue streams such as visual ads (leaderboards, skyscrapers, banners, rectangles, buttons, etc), text links (whether ones I sold my self or done through partnership with Google, IndustryBrains, VibrantMedia, etc.), web site (or channel) sponsorships, custom projects (eBooks, pop quizzes, surveys, microsites, whitepapers, etc). Some publishers also choose to include webinars, but I usually feel those should be omitted.
- RPM (revenue per thousand page views) – Think of this as somewhat akin to yield in print. How much money am I able to make per thousand page views? The forumula is RPM = REVENUE / (PAGEVIEWS/1000). I’d rather have a site that generates $100K per month in revenue with only 100,000 page views per month ($1000 RPM), than a site that has a 500,000 page views per month and generates $75K per month ($150 RPM).
Of course all of this assume that you’ve got a solid metrics system in place and that you are tracking online revenues properly, but of course you’re already doing that, right? 
10 Responses to “ “Key Web Metrics for Publishers”
Leave a Reply
About Me
Follow / Connect
Eric -
Great post… I agree with all, but will always question RPM as a valuable online metric.
I think a key here, as I discuss here: http://www.pubexec.com/pubtalk/pubtalk.bsp?sid=53842&var=story
is that publishers should not get enamored with analytics that they only can “react†on, but need to have plans in place to “act†on them.
Nice post Eric. What about time spent per visit? Is that going to take over page views?
Funny isn’t it? In the past, companies were trying to get the most clicks. Move, move, move. Now it seems that they’ll do anything to keep them on a page as long as possible (for example, Sony using video, games, etc. to keep users on a page).
Hi Joe. Time spent per visit is an interesting metric to perhaps show engagement of an audience with a site, but it’s my opinion that it’s not that useful as a media business metric. At the end of the day, advertisers are buying views of their ad which in general do not change or rotate based on the amount of time spent on a page or a session. And for publishers, time spent doesn’t translate into more revenue whereas more page views do. Video / audio changes that slightly as advertisers will want to know if someone actually saw their full ad, but that’s a differnt discussion.
Good points, Rob. RPM is very subjective and certainly isn’t standardized in any way. But as an internal metric it can be helpful as a gauge of how well you sell out your overall inventory and “monetize” that inventory. Also, I have to give credit where it’s due. This was something that Jim Ogle, a good freind, former colleague at Penton, and now the CFO of Cygnus, helped me create internally to gauge our financial success at Penton. It was a very useful tool. He also came up with RPS … revenue per subscriber …
to help gauge monetization of our email newsletters / list rental. Again, not perfet, but a useful tool.
You know, Eric, I thought of something else this morning.
1. Someone should do an article, white paper, etc. on what to do to increase the metrics you mention. Again, “acting” verus “reacting.”
2. You mention “solid metrics.” I wonder how many publishers are pullign out internal IP ranges from traffic and (if using log files analytics) keeping spider/bot IPs updated and removing them.
Funny you should suggest that, Rob. I’m in the middle of writing a Publishers Guide to Making Money Online called “Metrics That Sell … What Publishers Need to Know to Grow Their Online Business.” It will address many of these questions and will be available mid-August.
My only suggestion would be to offer practical stuff… as a online publisher, I could care less that someone says your PVPV should be 12 or more (or as high as possible). What I want to know are proven strategies to increase it from 2 to 4 then 4 to 8 then 8 to 16, etc.
- Rob
Eric,
I think you you covered one side of the equation well — what you get from the site.
However, there is another side and that is the time, effort, and cost that goes into supporting the the site and the various subproducts of it (newsletters, webcasts, etc.)
Only by looking at both sides can you really start to get a picture of whether your Web efforts are doing well.
– Frank
This is critical when you are deciding between various emedia initiatives.
Reading through this thread…
Eric, did you ever publish: “Metrics That Sell … What Publishers Need to Know to Grow Their Online Business.â€?
If so, I, and I think many others, would be interested in obtaining a copy.
And, to answer Rob’s very good question…yes, we pull out internal IP addresses and spiders/bots coming to our portfolio.
- Jeff
Hi Jeff. I never published that specific guide, but did publish “A Media Executive’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization — Critical Stragegies for Building Web Traffic and Revenue”
You can see a preview of it here: http://emediastrategist.texterity.com/emedia_preview/preview/
Contact me if you’d like to purchase it.