Dodgy limelight on newsletters

The Danish IAB, FDIM, will sometime during the autumn launch a new chart of the most popular newsletters in Denmark. The chart will report on how many active users the most popular newsletters have and thus create a sort of hitlist of ‘Opportunity to See’.

Personally I don’t get the point of this. I realize newsletters can be highly effective. Yet I find them very unsexy, and even though I’m subscribed to several of them I hardly ever open them. And this brings me to my point:

Why on Earth would a number for ‘Opportunity to See’ be interesting to anyone? It doesn’t say anything about the number of people actually opening up the newsletter and looking on the content and ads in them. It just tells the total number of newsletters sitting idle in peoples inboxes looking like spam.

Do you find such a number sexy? Really?

I know that some might find this useful when trying to sell ads to put in the newsletters. But let’s be honest. Wouldn’t you really be better off without this pitiful list?