Yesterday, an important question was sent to me on Twitter:
“Can I ask you what may seem like a question any Web ent. should already know? Is there a standard metric of visits to ad rev?”
Yes, there is. They vary depending on which medium of advertising you select:
1. Google Ads = $0.001 to $0.002 per “pageview” (or $1.00 to $2.00 per 1,000 pageviews). The average unique visitor might flip through 2 or 20 pages while they’re on the site. So you need to determine how many pages the average visitor would see on the site. (Note: It’s usually much less than what you guess it would be).
2. Banner Ads = Usually the same rate as the Google Ads but if the quality of the traffic is good and the site is extremely popular, this can stretch up to $0.005 per pageview (or $5.00 per 1,000 pageviews).
3. In-Text Ads = Depends on their relation to the site. This
could be anywhere from $0.0001 to $0.50 per unique visitor. You’d have to know exactly what you plan to do regarding this avenue in order to give you a better estimate.
You can use a few reference sites to determine how many pageviews you’d get from each unique visitor. For example, YouTube gets about 15-17 pageviews per visitor (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/youtube.com).
Another important metric that is looked at is “Loyalty.” Rather than looking at your traffic dashboard everyday and saying, “Wow I got 120 hits yesterday,” a better question is: “What percentage of people have returned to my website? Do people really relate with my brand?”
For the sake of bias and firm belief that Google Analytics is the best, I’ll use it as an example.
If you’re setting up an online merchant store, it’s fine to focus on visitors; if you’re running a blog (in which content is king), you’ll need to focus on readers.
Don’t just glance at your Google Analytics dashboard; check out your site’s loyalty by clicking: “Visitors>Visitor Loyalty>Loyalty.” If you’re a blogger, you’ll want to concern yourself with reader growth, not visitor growth. It’s an important distinction.
Hope this helps.