• by OMMA Editors , June 24, 2010

We went back to the drawing board this year when it came time to create our top online publisher's issue. In the past we'd evolved the system to arrive at a metric we called RPUU, revenue per unique user - the best signifier of underlying ad value we could come up with. It left some folks scratching their heads, but, hey, coming up with arcane metrics is what trade magazine editors do best.

So this year, we started in our usual way, consulting average monthly traffic data and industry estimates of advertising revenue. We consulted them, took them into consideration, and then put them in the backs of our minds.

In seeking to recognize the most important publishers online we thought that there were other factors at least as valuable, and we took into account sites' relevance, influence, innovation, and overall excellence in content, design and user experience, in addition to other intangibles we debated endlessly. The fruit of our labors, our ranked list of the 100 Most Most Important Online Publishers, starts on page 26; feel free to engage us in endless debate once you read it.

You'll also find in our list a few brief excursions including what we read for fun (just in case you cared). We asked, among others on staff, our own darling KPP, who, since she has not yet completed her first quarter century on this planet, gives us some indication of "what the kids are into." Noticeably absent from her list was Perez Hilton, to which she had once been glued. Mostly the staff returned picks of blogs and various distributed ephemera (including an Englishman who exists almost entirely on Facebook and Twitter). But editor Mandese, who is ageless, when asked what his "just for fun" read was, replied with a curt, "Google News."

And we remind you, as you read our list, that much like fun, importance is relative.

The Editors
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