Publishers Opt Out of the Pageview Rat Race
The promise of the Internet was that anyone with a keyboard and a connection could become a publisher and make tons of money. Like many promises rooted in theory, when it comes to practicality, things are quite different.
The reality of the digital ad system is that scale still matters. Smaller publishers have the deck stacked against them. They’ll never get the traffic numbers brands and buyers want. And in the age of automated ad systems, finding large pools of specific audiences is easy — and cheap. For many small publishers, it all adds up to the need to take a different route.
Click through to learn how publishers like The Awl, The Fader, Vice are generating revenue beyond the pageview.
Pageviews are nice, but if you can drive revenue other ways, go for it. Expect to see more of this as sites figure out ways to expand their business models beyond traffic.