Attention is greater than Retention

I have heard from more than one source that social websites are reliably seeing their CTR drop logarithmically in relation to page views.  This means that by the third page view, the CTR has dropped by more than half.  This is important information.  If ad space is part of your business model, then you might want to pay attention.  This says that increased page views does not equal increased revenue.  On the contrary, increased page views may actually mean increased cost.  It actually makes sense that newer visitors are more likely to bounce out of the site rather than stay around.  So, if you cannot get these people to click ads, what can you do?  Assuming ad space is you primary revenue model, my recommendation is that by page view number three, you should stop pushing ad impressions, and start encouraging referrals.  New referrals mean new eyes, which means higher CTR.  If you have other revenue models for users, such as virtual goods or feature sets you can shift to internal marketing and push these other monetization sources.

Comments

[Darryl Parker]

This is a great point considering the recent recommendations from Google: "Publish evolving stories under one permanent URL as “a living, changing, updating entity.” http://cli.gs/A17SvZ

Can you post a link to the source of this data?