Re: visits vs. hits

S. Finer (xerxes_at_clark.net)
Wed, 24 Jul 1996 10:54:29 -0400 (EDT)

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Traditionally, advertising has been priced on the basis of "impressions"
and hits can be equated to these. So the market exerts a pressure,
frequently coming from folks with little or no Net experience, to price
Net ads on a comparable basis. Few sites get enough traffic to charge
reasonable fees (from their perspective) of advertisers using the
number of visitors as a benchmark. Also, measuring visitors requires more
effort, i.e. special software, than merely recording "hits". So hits are
still a broadly employed pricing measurement, unfortunately.

However, visitors is the better way to measure traffic. And advertisers
need to be educated to this metric rather than the older method of
impressions. Web visits indicate positive interest on the part of the
target audience--impressions do not. This is why visits should earn more
than hits.

A visit to a web site indicates an action taken to pursue
information about a product or service; an impression does not. An
impression can be completely neutral....not so a visit, because it
requires actions on the part of the potential customer. Visits should be
documentable, and should receive compensation on a higher scale than hits
or impressions. Much of the market still needs to be educated in the
logic behind this reasoning. This was the lesson behind P&G's contract
with one of the search engines (Yahoo!).

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