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Article Excerpt
By Steve Smith
Publishers hungry for good news can find it in their Web traffic. To emphasize that, the customary digital boxscores comparison of current month versus previous month is, in this instance, comparing current year versus past year in the manner of min's advertising boxscores. Our first take is March, and the numbers are heartening.
In recent weeks, the Magazine Publishers of America reported that across 476 sites it tracked via Nielsen, traffic to magazine sites was +7.2% in first- quarter-2009 versus 2008. We have a number of titles that handily beat that rate of growth. For instance, Scientific American (SCIAM.COM, +46.84% page views/+29.24% unique visitors in March 2009 versus 2008) is a good example of a niche property that has successfully gotten into the digital eco-system. Better optimization for search has helped SciAm digital management increase search referrals 86% in the past year along with a 138% rise in links from external sources.
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM (+103.95% PVs, +85.79% UVs), which comprises several niche sites, nearly doubled its audience in the past year. But the award for "most improved" at this year's science content fair is DISCOVERMAGAZINE.com (+233.78% PVs, +199.12% UVs), which took off like a bottle rocket as it implemented a new strategy that embraced a popular science blog (Bad Astronomy) and acted as an aggregator of science news from around the Web.
Beyond science, Wenner's USMAGAZINE.COM (+200.30% PVs, +247.78% UVs) clearly succeeded over the past year in turning those occasional celebrity cover-story tsunamis into a loyal base of 11 million users. Hearst's COSMOPOLITAN.COM (+74.09% PVs, +55.67% UVs) now reaches 1.7 million readers, while its GOODHOUSEKEEPING.COM (+211.82% PVs, +142.53% UVs) is speaking to 2.4 million. And Bonnier Corp.'s relaunch of PARENTING.COM (+83.94% UVs) looks impressive.
In a era where Glam, iVillage, and now Yahoo! Shine are proving to be massive magnets of female audiences, the continued success of branded magazine sites demonstrates there is still room for growth and considerable traffic sharing in the category.
Two major relaunches we have covered in min seem to have paid off. Reader's Digest's restructured RD.COM (+32.85% PVs, +16.30% UVs) has seen modest success in expanding audience (1.8 million) but with strong page view activity.
And Time Inc.'s new HEALTH.COM (+218.84% PVs, +252.09% UVs) represented one of the company's key digital initiatives this past year. It planned to throw over $20 million worth of advertising against the new site and 1 billion ad impressions. The net effect of that push? Almost 2 million uniques in March.
So many branded sites and so many gainers. We will continue our review of year-over-year Web growth for consumer magazines this week on MINONLINE.COM.
Steve Smith (POPEYESMITH@COMCAST.NET) is digital media editor for min/min's b2b/MINONLINE.COM. He posts regularly on The Minsider blog and directs the min Webinars. Smith also co-chaired the April 22 min Day Summit and, as ceo of Roving Eyeball Inc., he consults for a number of publishers in the digital space.
MARCH 2009 VERSUS MARCH 2008 DIGITAL MEDIA BOXSCORES
Media Sites/Parent : All Recipes/Reader's Digest
URL : allrecipes.com
MAR '09 PV : 193,000,000
MARCH '08 PV : 166,382,406
% Diff. : 16
MAR '09 UV : 16,000,000
MAR '08 UV : 12,224,640
% Diff. : 30.88
Source : Omniture
Media Sites/Parent : Allure/CN Digital
URL : allure.com
MAR '09 PV : 4,956,548
MARCH '08 PV : 2,054,030
% Diff. : 141.31
MAR '09 UV : 748,388
MAR '08 UV : 233,728
% Diff. : 220.2
Source : Visual Sciences
Media Sites/Parent : Architectural Digest/CN Digital
URL : archdigest.com
MAR '09 PV : 1,886,930
MARCH '08 PV : 2,982,742
% Diff. : -36.74
MAR '09 UV : 112,999
MAR '08 UV : 168,043
% Diff. : -32.76
Source : Visual Sciences
Media Sites/Parent : Atlantic, The
URL : theatlantic.com
MAR '09 PV : 15,400,000
MARCH '08 PV : 15,100,000
% Diff. : NA
MAR '09 UV : 2,600,000
MAR '08 UV : 2,200,000
% Diff. :...
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