Chitika study suggests Digg traffic 3 times less likely to click ads than Google traffic
Recent analysis of 31 days’ worth of Chitika log data by Alden DoRosario showed something that many of us are already aware of: Traffic from Digg translates badly into ad clicks.
Looking at over a billion Chitika ad impressions and millions of clicks in the server log showed that, at least during the immediate and direct effect of a site being Dugg, visitors were over three times less likely to click on a Chitika ad than a visitor coming in from a Google search result.
Data was only collected for the beta Related Products Unit, because the ads are always placed at the end of blog posts, minimising discrepancies due to differing ad positioning. Those publishers who had never been Dugg were also filtered out.
The results of the survey showed that Google traffic had a CTR (Click Through Rate) of 0.97%, whereas Digg traffic’s CTR was 0.30%.
It’s an interesting analysis based on an alternative ad system. What’s important to note is that, as well as ensuring that your server can handle the effects of one or more Diggs, the benefits of these short-term influxes are often seen in more inbound links from other sources, more discussion, exposure for your blog as a whole, and some increase in regular readers/subscribers. All these factors should lead to better search engine positioning, which in turn can lead to higher revenue generation from search engine visitors – the 0.97% CTR brigade.
I’m a regular Digg visitor and while I enjoy the site, the Digg audience can be highly critical of articles getting dug. As much as I would enjoy reaching the front page with something I blogged, I wonder whether the temporary rush of traffic is worth the often harsh criticism. I wrote an article for IBM Developerworks that was well dug (500+ if I recall correctly); however, the Digg comment thread said nothing of my article but rather spun off into a debate of Perl as a “real” programming language. I know my comment here is only mildly related to this post; however, your post did get me thinking: Is getting dug at Digg really worth it?
Thanks for the input Bret.
I like Digg to a point, but it’s very exclusive (it’s not even a generic technology site, perhaps that’s what Slashdot fulfils) – when the categories are biased towards Apple, Microsoft, and a few others, it can sometimes be hard to even find a category to digg a story to – and then you run the risk of being accused of putting the story in the wrong place.
I find the Digg crowd (as a mass) is generally fairly unforgiving – maybe not as much as the /. clan – and the running commentary on the site itself is often quite negative and snarky – at least that doesn’t always translate into commentary on the dugg site itself.
I think there can be benefit to being Dugg, but it’s not always easy to see exactly where, when in the short term you seem to have to put up with very negative comments, and shoring up your web server or paying for extra bandwidth.