Entrecard Price vs Traffic Study

This isn't another post about how great Entrecard is nor is it another post about how much Entrecard sucks.
 
This isn't a list of tricks and tips for using EC either. If you don't use Entrecard on your own blog (you should), you'll probably not find anything of interest in this post.
 
This is some research that I've spent hours on today in order to bolster a hypothesis I've had. I hope every user of EC gets a chance to read this and draw their own conclusions and I hope Graham and PhiRatE get a chance to look at it too.
 
Now on to the science...
 
I'm comparing two benchmarks. Brief explanations of each and disclaimers below.
 
Entrecard Ad Price
I chose to focus this study on the Art Category of EC because it is a reasonable size to work with (163 sites) and because it has a broad range of ad prices (between 2 and 580 at time of sample). The number of usable sites for this study was only 133 because of...

• Pages not found
• Ads disabled
• Inaccurate Alexa rankings (certain Blogspot, Squidoo, etc. sites mostly of an ad price of 2)

 
Alexa Rank
I understand that there is much disagreement on the reliability of the Alexa ranking system but for this study, there was no better or easier benchmark to use. Numbers were obtained through using Sparky. One could argue that Alexa is easily "gamed" but I would make the assumption that if a webmaster were to go to the trouble of gaming Alexa that they would also do everything possible to inflate their EC price and the results below show that not to be (consistently) true and thus not a factor that would noticeably skew the results.
 
Everyone who's used EC knows that these two are not tied together in the EC system. Having prices unaffected by traffic volumes allow the playing field to remain level and ad prices influenced by both the site owner and the community as a whole. This is good.
 
Unfortunately this fairness has overtaken EC's usefulness in my opinion. The set-up of the EC site is very much based on a social networking site rather than an advertising site. There is no ability for someone seeking to place an ad to search by traffic or value. The limited information on an ad's performance is only shown after the ad has run. Thus the average person seeking to place an ad is left to rely upon the pricing system or to do extensive research on their own.
 
The grid below shows the Art category's price curve. The vertical axis represents the prices from 0 to 580 credits and the horizontal axis is the 133 sites in order from most expensive (1, left) to cheapest (133, right). (click to enlarge)
There's nothing particularly unusual here except for the fact that if the curve were to show value rather than price it would probably a little gentler of a curve than it is now.
 
Below is the same horizontal axis (133 sites in order from most expensive to least expensive) but the vertical axis represents the Alexa traffic rank. NOTE: A lower Alexa rank is desirable so the sites with the higher spikes have less traffic than the valleys. The best value sites are the closest to the bottom of the grid. (click to enlarge) There is a very loose pattern (lean back and squint) that correlates the highest pattern of traffic with the highest EC price. My two complaints...

• Although there is a pattern, it is vague and not closely enough related.
• This type of information is not available through Entrecard for it's users to utilize in making judgments.

High and Low
In the grid below I've combined the two for better comparison. The EC price is listed on the left vertical axis and the Alexa rank is listed on the right vertical axis. Point A represents the lowest Alexa rank in the Art category. Point A is at a reasonable place on the grid (position 132). Points B however points to the top two Alexa spots at positions 22 (top) and 49.
Message to Users
Entrecard at it's heart is a venue for free advertising. One facet of getting the best value out of your credits is to determine how many people view your ad (CPM) and how many click your ad (CPC). The best value sites are not necessarily the most expensive ads. Higher priced ads may get you more exposure within the EC network but the highest trafficked sites will get the most exposure to all internet users.
 
Message to Entrecard
Please consider expanding the searching and tracking features. I'm sure you're aware of the features that Project Wonderful offers such as searching by price and views plus easy to read graphs of daily widget views and clicks. I'm sure the same features are within your capabilities.
 
I do still love EC and all of it's users but there's still a lot of room for improvement to make it live up to it's potential as a  valuable advertising tool.
 
Technical Disclaimers:

• The numbers and graphs are only representative of a single Saturday morning and could have slightly different results when studied for a month or longer. (no, not doing it)
• The names of all of the sites covered by this study have been withheld in order to avoid any insult or praise.
• Other EC categories may or may not yield the same results.
• This post is seriously lacking teh funny.