I think to some extent there is a symbiotic relationship between both content and traffic and, traffic and content, however, as of right now in the industry i beleive that there has been a shift in the paradigm that once was it takes traffic to sell content, nowadays it takes content to get traffic, especially as more and more end-user orientated sites are gaining in popularity with surfers.

You can take traffic and throw it at a blank page with a join link on it and, eventually someone will generate a sale.

However, you take traffic and throw it at a page with movie clips on it and a sale will be made eventually but, that traffic will also stick around waiting for 'more' movies to appear.

Regards,

Lee