MySpace Math Does Not Compute

The New York Times ran a piece on MySpace generating $200M revenues this year (an estimate from an outside analyst) with 1B page views a day at a "slightly over" 10c CPM.  Now, 10c CPM * 1B page views * 365 days = $36.5M, not $200M.  So a better current estimate of MySpace revenues is $40M annualized, based on 'slightly over' 10c CPM.   Ross Levinsohn thinks he may be able to double the CPM, and MySpace looks to double over the year in members, and page views may grow faster than members, so perhaps at year-end they could be at a $200M run rate.  No way would their year be $200M.  And even the $200M run rate seems a stretch.  The 10c CPM is a lot lower than even the normal remnant ad rates of 50c on the web, and as members increase there may be more a regression to the mean (fewer page views per member) than the other way around.  A phenomenal success, certainly, but not yet the money engine of Google.