Many media buyers are often forced to secure ad inventory based on total impressions…which in turn gives web designers a terrific incentive to inject a website with as many unnecessary pages as visitors will swallow. MySpace has been frequently called out on its bloated structure just for this reason. Because of page view inflation, flash and the increasing use of AJAX, time based metrics provide a much clearer picture of visitor interaction with a site.

But comparing traditional page view-based traffic to time based traffic metrics yields an interesting analytic: page views per minute, calculated as the average number of pages served for each minute a visitor spends on a site. Page views per minute (PPM) is a function of two things: how fast visitors are consuming content and the inefficiency of a sites structure. So who are the worst PPM offenders? Surprise! MySpace isn’t one of them.

The chart below shows the top 20 sites in terms of Page views served per minute in September, along with each sites total number of visits.

Among the list of highest PPM sites, there is an interesting mix of domains that would naturally encourage users to refresh pages frequently, sites that (innocently) could probably be tightened up, and those that are simply trying to serve as many ad impressions as possible without driving visitors away.

Questionable Motives:

• Facebook.com – Facebook serves 3.4 pages per minute of active use. This could be a function of Facebook members digging into all the meaty content, but there’s also something funky going on. Looking at this metric over time, PPMs start to increase dramatically. Back in September 2006, Facebook was serving 2.5 pages per minute. The .9 PPM increase may not seem substantial, but when your site is generating nearly 14 billion page views, that’s nearly $4 million in incremental monthly ad revenue at a $1 CPM.

Impression factories:

• Smashawards.com – Smashawards was by far the worst offender on the list. Part of the Smashits network, this site serves 6 ads on every page. Additionally, it automatically refreshes itself after about a minute of inactivity, effectively forcing new page views, 6 new impressions. I would wager these ads don’t perform well.
• Southasianews.com - this news site has 6 different ad placements on their homepage. With that much content and a new page served every 10 seconds, some of those advertisers are getting ripped off.
• Mygirlyspace.com – While MySpace.com doesn’t make the list, at least two sites devoted to MySpace layouts do. This site actually serves an ad when you click through to another piece of content. Here’s a tip, don’t do this when someone clicks on a link looking to advertise with your site.
• Makeoversolutions.com – Part of the glam network, this site serves a new page every 17 seconds. A word to media buyers, other glam network sites just barely missed making the list.

Content buffets: Sites that should have high PPM

• Smugmug.com - Devoted entirely to photographs, this site allows subscribers to share photos on an ad-free platform. At the pace that people browse photos, (especially wedding photos, the biggest tag on the site) its appearance on this list is no surprise.
• Americansingles.com - While the high PPM at this online dating site may mean members aren’t finding the love they are looking for, it’s logical they would be checking out all their options, so a high PPM is not surprising.
• Davidsbridal.com – Wedding Gowns and Tuxedos? Lots of choices means a lot of (quick) decisions.
• Enterprise.com – Renting a car apparently means inputting a lot of information. Enterprise apparently took the approach of spacing this visitor information process over multiple pages.

This type of analysis is not something that can be applied universally, and it means nothing without considering a site’s design, purpose, and content. But it does help to expose sites that are clearly out to make money or hit traffic goals at the cost of visitor experience… and hopefully help move the needle away from non-performing banner ads.

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