So 320 million US pageviews X RPM of $6 would be $1,920,000 per month. And I am estimating that is on the LOW end. He is likely selling Canadian, UK and Australian inventory as well (english speaking countries) and at higher CPM rates than U.S.

Here is an extract from your post (http://reut.rs/8Bazhh) on my column in January this year in which I said online CPMs for many sites had fallen to about $4:

“I have no idea where Gapper’s getting his $4 CPM figure from, but it’s clearly much closer to being a minimum than an average . . . It’s also worth noting that Gapper has managed to confuse CPMs — the amount of money that an advertiser pays per 1,000 pageviews — with RPMs, or the amount of revenue that a publisher receives per 1,000 pageviews. There’s nearly always more than one ad unit per page, which means that RPMs are some multiple of CPMs.

“Gapper is systematically overestimating the upside of subscription revenues, while underestimating the magnitude of advertising revenues.”

As you say above, the McGrath-Gawker CPM figure comes out to $5 if you assume none of the international traffic can be monetised (if it can, the CPM figure would be lower – about $4, in fact).

Still think I’m wrong?

John

I was curious as to where you derived the blog valuations trading at 6x revenues from? In the past, I had seen 2-4x revenues but had never looked at metrics in-depth.

Jay
@marketfolly