CNET Ducks Questions on its Conference Call

Comments by CNET Inc. CEO Shelbie Bonnie from the full transcript of CNET's conference call last night:

Imran Khan - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Good afternoon. Three questions. First, I think you said that page views, if I ex out Webshots, was up 12%. If my memory is correct, I think it was 18% last quarter. I was trying to better understand, how should we think about page views in the longer term?

Secondly, you talked about the unique users growth of 1% from the second quarter of 2005. I was wondering if I could get that number ex-ing out Webshots. Those are the two major questions...

Shelby W. Bonnie

The first question, when you look at page views over the last three years and you look at trends overall, as we said starting three years ago, it has been an area of focus as we have built up inventory in anticipation of what we were seeing overall within the industry. I think at the time, when you look at some extraordinary numbers going two and three years ago, we said at the time we thought that those numbers, we would go through fits and starts of kind of higher numbers and lower numbers. I think the good thing overall is that we feel very comfortable with where we are with respect to an overall inventory level and our ability to monetize what we have.

We did a really good job of building into a trend and a need. Going back a couple of years ago, we said we thought it was more economic to do then. I think we feel very pleased in terms of what we are seeing with respect to overall trends in our business.

I think we have plenty of inventory. We feel very good about what we are doing with respect to our ability to serve our users. We are feeling good about directionally where the business is going.

Secondly, when you speak about page views longer-term, I think one of the things that everyone just needs to keep on the radar screen is the page view metric is going to become less and less meaningful as time goes on, as we do more video and as our sites get more interactive and dynamic, we are going to have to start looking at other metrics in terms of how you think about interaction.

For instance, right now, you have seen a real focus on our part in terms of how we leaned into video over the last six months, so I think that is something that all of us are just going to have to be aware that is one of the things that you are going to see overall.

With respect to unique users excluding Webshots, we are actually not providing that number because it is not available in terms of how we [de-dupe] it within our network. I would say overall if you look at what we are seeing in the network, we are very pleased from both a user standpoint and a page view standpoint. I also think the stuff we have seen around the Webshots product, I think we are really excited about what the redesign can mean.

The opportunity on Webshots really has been a monetization opportunity and I think the team has done a really good job of both making a product that can be very engaging for users but also provides a real foundational product in allowing us to do a better job of monetizing. I think the trends overall in that area have been good...

Nice simple answer from Shelbie, right. Just like his answers a year ago about Webshots.