The Value of Traffic

trafficsized.jpgInteresting discussions floating around the blogosphere about the value of traffic from various sources such as social networks, search results, organics, etc.  Putting a specific value on that traffic can be difficult because a static metric to measure the importance and monetary value from different traffic sources is hard to pin down.

Technology Evangelist has a nice summation of the discussion and includes some stats such as possible CPM figures on various traffic types:

Clearly, Yahoo of MySpace aren’t dependent on only one form of advertising. For example, MySpace generates PPC revenue from searches. Yahoo generates CPM revenue from tons of non-search related page views. Google has the highest percentage of search related click revenues of any company at this point. That’s where the big money and margins is at today. Could it move to other things, like online video advertising in pre or post-roll ads on YouTube or a new form of online advertising that hasn’t been invented yet? Absolutely. But for now, any valuation based on page views without taking revenue into consideration would be a mistake.

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