You can be rest assured that the publishers will try to maximize monitization in additon to their core competency, and eventually want to get better at it, as you have pointed out. So all the more reason to invest in an ad network.

Validates why companies like Amazon are scrambing towards making their own adnetwork like clickriver.

Hope you are well.

One could also say that many “high volume” sites — such as those listed in the bottom right quadrant of your chart - are generally low value right now because of the novelty of the medium (social media, for lack of a better term). Their rapid volume growth was fueled in part by product development decisions which led to mass, word of mouth, and viral adoption.

Deep analysis of their users has therefore just begun to occur, and for such analysis to be really effective in moving these businesses to “high value” businesses I think it needs to account for new ways that users interact with the media. For example, CNNMoney is high value based on its content and assumptions about its users — but the starting point is the content.

The high volume sites you list will never have the advantage of “premium” content like finance. They will have, with the right data analysis, something I think which will be just as valuable — data about their users interests, what they ae doing, what they like to do, etc. When that data can be digested, I believe we will see high volume sites move to high value.