About.com’s rebranding to DotDash – What we can learn
Customers trust domain authority websites – Greater traffic.
Advertisers want to deliver ad impressions to highly targeted audiences – Higher willingness to pay for targetable audience.
Therefore, domain-authority websites present highly targetable audience to advertisers, earning greater revenues on CPM basis.
Publishers can better sell ads to advertisers if they present them a more actionable audience Digital Marketing captures two kinds of information points about consumers, that your Rock-and-stone kind of marketing can only assume from rough segmentation variables like income or geolocation.
Consumer Interests – based on browsing behaviour
Consumer Intent – based on recency & frequency of action-oriented browsing behaviour
A user checking for iPhone reviews on About.com might just be a knowledge geek, redirected to that place from reading a fascinating biography of Steve Jobs.
However the same user checking reviews on Lifewire is likely more interested in purchasing an iPhone.
Their browsing history will give an idea of what to expect from them. If the user in the same session, or across different sessions, reads content related to the iPhone, that very likely demonstrates a strong intent to purchase the iPhone.
If that user also goes to Investopedia, they are also probably looking at making money as well, so they probably have an ability to pay.
Intent + Ability to pay = Sale