Steve Rubel writes that the Page View is on it’s last legs, because Ajax and DHTML markup will mean that visitors to a page will no longer necessarily call a page from the server. I don’t agree. Sure, with my Web 2.0 cheer squad hat on, I get and support the idea of attention, however with my marketing trained hat on, as much as attention and not needing to load a page to view more is the future, it also lacks one critical feature: metrics. How do you start measuring attention? with page views you’ve got a tangible, a fairly universally accepted metric to use when selling inventory, or vice versa when you’re buying inventory. Page views won’t die until such time someone comes up with a universally acceptable way of measuring attention. If time the equation? possibly, and I guess one day we’ll see. Personally, despite what the Web 2.0 cheer squad might say, I’m don’t think that time is anywhere in the next year or 2.
The page view is safe for now
Duncan I tend to agree with you. CPM adds aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. You only have to look at the online versions of the papers here in Australia to see how many companies – big and not so big – who are queueing to to buy some ad space.