I've been telling folks this for a couple of months--MySpace isbrilliantly/evilly designedto generate a ton of page views. The result of making a ton of extraneouspages is that you have gap between what you make in advertising and what otherfolks make off their pages. Advertisers are not stupid, they know/figure outthat the page views that their paying for and the clicks their getting don'tmatch and the CPM rates drop (or never go up in the case of MySpace).
Of course, at the end of the day they still have an amazing brand and anamazing number of unique users so you can't take anything away from them. Weall know, however, that if you make people click 2-3x as much that opens thedoor for someone else to come in with a better/more efficient service (thinkweb-mail before GMAIL).
Ever wonder why MySpace hasn't made their pages more AJAX-y??? Answer: becauseAJAXkills your traffic--at least in the short term.
MYSpace page view goosing...
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(Page 1 of 1)2. In response to AJAX killing ad revenue, how about this? Propose a cost-per-action (CPA) instead of CPM. If AJAX kills ad revenue due to the number of page views decreasing, a model based on cost-per-action is actually a better way of measure exposure to ads. For example, if you use AJAX and instead of 10 page views you have 10 actions, those actions can be measured as time the user was exposed to an ad. Page views go down, but time spent on any given page increases, which seems like it would be more valuable to advertisers.
Posted at 9:06AM on Apr 24th 2006 by Austin Marshall
3. Thanks for explaining the lack of Ajax on Myspace, it had me puzzled. The more I played with it, the more I saw how page views were key. Well, that's good for the interweb, ain't it?
Meh. Is there any reason one can't use DHTML, er, Ajax to serve ads? Thus, cost per action... The busier a person is, the more ads they see (and with 4-8 slots on a page, those rotate, like the slats on a billboard or soccer stadium wall, around the page).
Posted at 10:19PM on Apr 24th 2006 by Victor Agreda, Jr.
4. I think MySpace's rewards based messaging is funny. Send any message and you are presented with massive, sexy, 430x600 ad for True.com
Posted at 11:40PM on Apr 26th 2006 by Eliot Phillips
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1. Perhaps I'm the only one but MySpace pages all seem very 'nouveau web 2.0'.
Remember when everyone had a Geocities/Tripod/ page, it was full of annoying GIFs/WAVs/MIDIs and all the other bells and whistles people thought would be interesting?
What's changed? Everyone now has a Myspace page, and it's full of annoying video files and audio clips. When you want to read someone's blog/diary/homepage, do I want to hear/watch a music video? Perhaps if it was playing quietly in the background, but it's not. It's full volume and distracting.
Nothing has changed, the masses don't know how to create a page that keeps the viewer interested. They love to add distracting content that draws the user away from the ads and basically ruins the experience.
I once wondered why there was no 'skip to the last page of comments' on any of your blogs, then I realised why. But is that page view a good investment for the advertiser? I don't re-read the page, infact I use PgDwn so I never even see the ad.
Another example, I've often seen sites that make the CPC bar load last, so when I go to click something, the CPC ad has suddenly loaded and I've inadvertantly clicked it. Is that a worthwhile click for the advertiser?
Ask not what your advertiser can do for you, ask what you can do for your advertiser! ;)
Posted at 8:09AM on Apr 24th 2006 by Adam