CNN polls an attempt to get web hits??

[kerryin2004]

I wouldn't put it past them..It was obvious after the second that they weren't going to get the answer they wanted, so to put up a third leads me to believe they are trying to get hits for advertising purposes.

[Not Me]

1. Absolutely.

I used to work in internet marketing for a Fortune 50 company...traffic is the name of the game...especially when you are selling online ads.

[Atman]

2. These days its the CTR and conversions, not eyeballs.

In the early days of this Internet fad, "eyeballs" were the goal. Today, the Click Through Rate is far more important...sites like CNN get tons of repeat viewers all day long, as do many such sites, so merely visiting it is almost meaningless anymore. The advertisers now want people who not only view their ads, but CLICK THROUGH to the advertiser's site. There is often an even higher additional amount paid for a click through that results in a sale (the conversion rate). DU is a prime example, though there are no ads here. If there were, most of us would ignore them, and the advertisers would be KILLED when their bills came...I open DU pages probably a hundred times a day. No advertiser wants that...they want quality traffic looking to buy something.

True, the odds of CT's and a conversion are increased with saturation marketing, but it isn't economical to pay for simple eyeballs anymore. You can still buy impressions (eyeballs), but any advertiser would catch on quick if the campaign they expected to run two weeks/X impressions based on CNN's normal traffic, and they were all used up in three days. They'd demand to see traffic stats, and this shenanigans wouldn't fly.

I think they're just running scared. The empire is falling apart, just as CNN made the final leap to the Dark Side with Fox. More likely their taking heat for the politics of it. IMHO.

(PS - I founded a dot com in 2000, which is still in business.)

[sandnsea]

3. Branding

It's always valuable to pay for a certain amount of advertising that is for branding purposes only. Those campaigns aren't even designed for click-thru. One way or the other, they're making money off the traffic and screwing with the polls could very well just be a traffic gimick.