In an interview shortly following espn.com's redesign using Web standards (An Interview With Mike Davidson of ESPN), Associate Art Director Mike Davidson cited reduced file sizes as an immediate benefit:
We reduced the size of our front page code by about 50%, and by using absolute positioning, we are able to display important parts of the page before other parts may have fully loaded yet.
In Jeffrey Veen's fantastic new article for Adaptive Path, The Business Value of Web Standards, Veen also lauds reduced file sizes as a quantitative effect of using standards:
When we stripped away the fonts, tables, and little images used as design elements on our home page, we reduced the size of the code from 20.9K to 9.2K. Now, this may not seem like a lot, but it would aggregate to quite a bit if our site generated heavy traffic.
It's nice to see the design community expressing the economic benefits of Web standards. If businesses aren't impressed by increased accessibility, simplified maintenance, or faster downloads, we think they'll warm to the idea of saving money.