paidContent has a great summary: If WSJ.com Was Set Free: The Numbers At Stake
A summary of their summary:
Some estimates from the report:
– The total online division of DJ, which includes MarketWatch and several other properties, will generate an estimated $115 million in advertising revenue in 2007.
– Of the ad revs, about $75 million (+13% Y/Y) is generated by WSJ.com. In addition, WSJ.com will generate roughly $65 million (+11%) in subscription revenue in 2007, putting advertising/subscription revenues at a 54% / 46% split, or $140 million in total.
– MarketWatch will generate roughly $40 million in advertising revenue in 2007
– An average page view on WSJ.com currently commands almost 4x the ad revenue of a page view on NYTimes.com.Then the likely impact of making WSJ.com free:
– WSJ.com would have to increase page views by 2x – 3x, which is unlikely in the near-term, even as a free site, but longger term it should be viewed in context of News Corp’s big online reach.
– A potentially free WSJ.com poses the greatest immediate threat to Yahoo! Finance, AOL Finance, and MSN Money.
– If News Corp moves more aggressively toward building out WSJ.com’s national and political news coverage (which has been suggested), we believe the competitive threat would extend further to the general news sections of the portals, including MSNBC and CNN.
With AJAX, online video, microchunking, widgitization, RSS, etc, the trusty old page view has become less and less relevant and useful as the base key performance indicator for the modern online property. If your site’s content consumption isn’t consistently based on an HTML page loading inside a browser window, then what does a page view really measure? In the case of RSS feeds and widgets, content may be consumed without generating a single page view.
