Publishing 2.0 - Latest Comments in Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Bennett Zucker — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 16:15:01 -0000

Good post, but it's not clear to me why it's bad to get an occasional surge of readers from a source like Digg. Unless it brings your servers to a crashing halt, you'll almost always find a few new marginal readers among the hordes from this source, and at no cost. It's no different than circulation-building techniques: Your most desirable subscribers are the ones who renew time and again with little or no prompting (or marketing expense). Next are those originally referred by complementary, desirable sources. But to meet your numbers, you may have to resort to "cheap" sources occasionally. They give you a rush of trials, and you accept the fact that they won't convert as well. It costs you little or nothing and you won't spend anything trying to convert them later. "Bad" traffic will go away on its own, so no need to take action against it now.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

phoenix — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 21:25:03 -0000

regarding the "submit to digg" button still on the post:

I don't think the problem here is with Digg, or the traffic from Digg, or even the whole of the Digg community-I'm all but sure that the majority of the Digg reading community don't comment on the posts (I can vouch for this at least personally-most Digg users go for news and interesting content, not for the "discussion") but instead look for interesting media and topics and then head over to those links that interest them.

I think that the traffic isn't the bad part, it's the segment of the Digg community that tends to go with the traffic that's problematic. By and large the folks who comment on Digg are..well..everything that's already been said and is widely understood. The rest of the folks, who don't generally go to Digg for anything but news and linkworthy content, are just fine.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Otis Gospodnetic — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 11:53:50 -0000

Interesting post, useful information. Funny the post still has "Submit to Digg" link below it. :)

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Three — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:49:02 -0000

That's about all I needed to hear about it. Who needs readers like that. Or are they just trolls?

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Scott Karp — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:21:26 -0000

Lawrence, do you have examples of Dugg articles that have received lots of links from Digg users?

Prof. Daga, you can see Digg's demographics here.

HMTKSteve, good for you but not good for your advertisers is a market imperfection and it won't last.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:39:53 -0000

Diggbait!

It's nice to have a rigorous analysis, but I think this is cast against something of a strawman. Of course advertisers know all about raw audience numbers vs. target demographics, and one is not the same as the other.

The issue is that most of us get neither :-(.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

HMTKSteve — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:04:53 -0000

Scott,

I said "good for you" but that does not necessarily mean it is also good for your advertisers!

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

lawrence coburn — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:27:59 -0000

Rand Fishkin gave a great presentation about the dynamics of getting dugg at the last Pubcon. His findings - Digg users don't ever click on ads, and they rarely come back. So why would anybody want to get Dugg? Because Digg users will link to you in droves.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Prof. Daga — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:42:25 -0000

Wow...94% male? There is something a bit sad about that.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Scott Karp — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:28:55 -0000

HMTKSteve,

If your advertising model is based on a per-impression model (CPM), Digg is good for you.

Only if your advetisers want to reach young, male (94%), geeks.

gz,

Just basic demographics is a big variable.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

gz — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:09:08 -0000

Great point. Completely agree that "At some point sites are going to start discriminate among traffic sources in terms of quality rather than quantity". I suspect the availability of consistent, reliable, granular metrics of user engagement is one of the variables that will drive this transition. What are the other critical variables?

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

HMTKSteve — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:07:58 -0000

If your advertising model is based on a per-impression model (CPM), Digg is good for you. If your advertising model is based on a per action or per click model (CPA/CPC) such as AdSense or afilliate links than Digg traffic is bad for you.

Search traffic does tend to run high in regards to conversions (people buying or leaving via an advertising link). Digg can sometimes give you a few extra advertising clicks but it tends to be less than 0.001%.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Eric — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:51:47 -0000

I'd noticed this back when I used to run AdSense. Can't say my site was every a heavily trafficked one, but every once in a while I'd get linked to by a big site (never Digg though) and witness up to 4000 visitors, up from my usual 100-200 or so. The funny thing was that despite a 20 fold increase in traffic, I wouldn't get any more ad clicks than on any other day. The only thing that my number of clicks really correlated with was search engine traffic.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Dave Morgan — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:39:16 -0000

Scott,

You make a great point. Advertisers are learning to discriminate more and more about the quality of audiences that they receive from publishers, and they are already adjusting the rates that they will pay for those audiences accordingly. This will certainly trickle down to publishers' allocation of resources to various link referrers and tagging sources. They will discriminate more and focus more on those that send them the best people. Certainly quality will matter just as much as quantity. For example, if you are a US-based site with US-based ad sales, why would you spend time generating links that bring you traffic from Brazil?

Dave