On Friday I wrote this sentence:

Metrics like pageviews and subscriber counts are a cheap and dying metric.

Re-reading it, it sounds to me like a sensational exaggeration. And that was not my intention. I apologize for that.

My intention was to try and convey that the ratio of pageviews to engaged readers is not as high as it once was.

Perhaps a better analogy would have been to relate pageviews to economic inflation. As pageviews become more common, their overall value decreases. Just as a dollar today doesn’t buy what it used to, so too a pageview isn’t necessarily worth what it used to be.

Update Regarding the “Death” of Pageviews as a Metric