Revenue per...eyeball?

March 27, 2009 10:03 AM

Dotcom revenue statistics for dummies. I'm trying to get my head around how stats like revenue/page view, revenue/unique user, etc. are calculated and used.

Help a dotcom novice understand some basics.

First off, I'm wondering if I use last twelve months revenue, how do I match that to unique users or page views? It seems the figures on sites like Compete and Quantcast are given in monthly terms. Would I look over the last twelve months and take an average of the monthly page views? Or would I just use the most recent statistic available (February '09 in this case)? Also, can anyone explain to me how Quantcast in particular calculates its "People" figure?

I'm looking at public and private companies, and obviously having more success finding info for the public companies. When I dig into their financials, often I find components of the revenue breakdown that I think should be excluded for an "apples-to-apples" comparison. That is, some companies have lines of business that fall well outside the area I'd like to learn more about, or are for a region I'd like to exclude from my analysis. Those I can easily ignore. But then there are other revenue segments like "advertising revenue" that could at least partially be attributed to the region of interest. Should I look at the regional revenue breakdown and allocate based on that?

Other suggestions on interesting statistics to examine along these lines also welcome, as well as the best source for this sort of information. If there's a book or site that covers this topic, please point me to it.

Thanks a million, Mefites!

posted by xiaolongbao to work & money (1 comment total)

Y'all got nothing? I'm sad...*goes off cries eyeballs out*
posted by xiaolongbao at 8:52 AM on May 16