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RealMoney.com : James J. Cramer


Living in the Past With Pageviews

By James J. Cramer

10/22/2001 12:15 PM EDT

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Click here for the latest from James J. Cramer.
Homestore.com (HOMS:Nasdaq - news - commentary - research - analysis) is still living in the past. So is Primedia (PRM:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis). So is New York Times (NYT:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis).

All three organizations are continuing to point out pageview growth and how many people are coming to their sites. How 20th century!

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Primedia Joins the Shortfall Crowd

New York Times is the worst at this. The company continues to pretend that pageviews matter. Primedia's not much better. Its constant trumpeting of pageviews for its About.com acquisition seems positively comical, as the company deals with the balance sheet from Hades. (I am an employee of Primedia's New York magazine, something I point out just so someone doesn't accuse me of telling the truth when I shouldn't be.)

But if you want to know why this metric is positively atavistic, take a look at Homestore. To be honest, I used to like this company. I was never jammed in that secondary at Morgan Stanley, so I always felt that I was not hurt by this equity. But Homestore built itself as the pageview leader in the industry, which should have been a huge red flag. When you hear about people trumpeting pageviews instead of revenue, that's a sign they are all about trying to get ad revenue -- and ad revenue on the Web is very scarce.

Any company that tries to capture pageviews right now is playing a losing game. You get pageviews by paying large portals lots of money, money that you can only recoup through advertising. If there is no advertising, you are actually losing money per pageview, as I am sure New York Times, About and Homestore are.

I know that this may seem counterintuitive, because we all are so used to the logic that each additional pageview has no cost. But -- and you may have to trust me as a founder and board member of TheStreet.com -- nothing could be further from the truth. Pageviews alone, without ads, amount to little or no business at all.

The interesting question is, do the managements of these companies understand that? Frankly, judging from their press releases, I don't think so. And that's what's really scary.


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Dow Jones S&P 500 NASDAQ 10-Year Note
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James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he invites you to send comments on his column to jjcletters@realmoney.com.
Read our conflicts and disclosure policy.
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Dow Jones S&P 500 NASDAQ 10-Year Note
10,471.50 1,106.41 2,190.31 35.40
Oil *
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UP
65.67
UP
4.06
DOWN
0.55
UP
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