• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, November 13, 2008

If a publisher's content is being read online, chances are it's not happening on their own site. That remarkable finding is part of new research being released today by tech firm Attributor.

On average, Attributor found, content publishers gain nearly 60% of their content views off their destination sites. What's more, in categories like automotive and travel, that percentage is even more severe, with auto content getting almost 6 times more views off-site than on the original destination site.

With the help of Web analytics firm Compete, Attributor tracked the content of over 100 publications across roughly 30 billion Web pages for its new study.

"Across all sites in the study, publishers have an untapped off-site audience that is almost 1.5 times the size of the audience that visits their site," said Rich Pearson, vice president of marketing at Attributor.

Using a CPM of $1, Attributor found that 40% of the publishers studied are missing out on a minimum of $100,000 in annual ad revenue, while 58% are missing out on a minimum of $50,000 in annual revenue.

Attributor licenses content and reader analysis technology to about 14 top publisher clients, including Reuters, Condé Nast, and the Financial Times.

The Redwood City-based firm fingerprints and continuously monitors its clients' original content as it is distributed across the Web-- providing analysis, statistics and a clear view of how the content is being discussed, re-used, and monetized.

At first glance, some analysts found Attributor's findings hard to swallow.

"I don't know exactly how they conducted their research, but it seems a bit doom-and-gloom to me," said Emily Riley, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "It would make more sense if (the research) included user-generated content."

Pearson, however, insisted that the new findings are an accurate reflection of how publishers' content is being consumed online.

"Most people are shocked by the data," said Pearson. "If a blog or publisher posts an article, on average, we find about 20 different copies of that article online. It's the natural proliferation of text content."