I forgot to mention last week a post that Jeff Nolan -- VP of NewsGator's Media & Consumer Products -- had up on his personal blog regarding perceived value.

In the case of NewsGator, he explains that though we measure our widget value through a number of different metrics, the "one measure that I believe is important is the effective CPM of the widgets we are serving under hosted contract basis."  (This metric represents the price we are charging per thousand widget impressions we are contracted to deliver.)  He notes that "over the last year this effective CPM has declined, indicating that we are increasing the unit volume of widget capacity we contract for while reducing the price" as well as "increasing the functionality" we provide.

Though some might see this as a no-brainer, thinking that prices simply will get lower as the market becomes more competitive, Jeff actually opines that "the market is getting less competitive as it stabilizes and two camps emerge, those that offer purely ad-based pricing models and those that are offering a hosted subscription service and ad-based pricing."  In addition, he adds that NewsGator has "increased our client base and contracted capacity, recently closing our best quarter ever, which indicates that our pricing is not an obstacle to closing business."

But he believes that the real reason for the change in the effective CPM metric is actually because of NewsGator's philosophy that "the best way to win in a market is to deliver a product that works as promised and constantly optimize it for price and performance to ensure that the client believes they are getting the best value possible from the relationship."  He adds that we "have been fortunate enough to experience near 100% client renewals through 2008."  This, he says, is really the take home message: our customer satisfaction puts us in an "excellent positioning as we enter an uncertain macro economic environment."

In short, in a time where people are trying to stretch the value of a dollar as far as they can, making sure your customers are happy and providing them with consistently more than they expect is really the best way to persevere through choppy economic waters.