Thanks to David Shoenberg of Career Sports Entertainment for sending me this article from Brandweek:
Social-networking sites sell more than page views
By Catharine P. Taylor
February 19, 2007
Digital media executives watched throughout 2006 as Web 2.0 asserted Internet users’ creative independence from the media giants. And by November, it was nearly a fait accompli. That was when comScore Media Metrix showed that, for the first time, page views for News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media, driven largely by MySpace, outstripped those of venerable Internet brand Yahoo. While Yahoo showed a 9 percent decline in page views, to 38 billion, FIM showed a 2 percent increase to 39.5 billion. The spread widened in December, with FIM posting 41.5 billion page views, while Yahoo tallied just under 36 billion.
While there are obvious caveats with any measure of Internet audience—the FIM number includes properties besides MySpace, and Yahoo has some social-networking sites—the numbers show where the prevailing traffic winds are blowing. They are going in the direction of properties that allow users to connect with other users and create their own content. For advertisers and media buyers, the next step should be to simply follow the eyeballs and soon a proportionate number of ad dollars will flow toward MySpace and its competitors.
But some re-engineering may need to take place before that happens. Measured by statistics such as page views, the biggest social-networking sites certainly rival the longtime biggest sites on the Web. But a closer look at their traffic shows that, in fact, they differ markedly from their older competitors. Unique audiences are smaller, and the number of page views per person—especially among the youth demographic that accounts for most of the traffic on sites such as MySpace and Facebook—tends to be much higher. So, while social media rewrites rules of content creation and distribution, it is also poised to revise the analysis around which metrics are important when evaluating advertising properties, as well as what constitutes a successful ad unit…
While NFL team sites have had the quantity numbers over the past couple of years what gets overlooked is the “quality” of our content and the loyalty of our fans and customers. Our goal should be leveraging that base and presenting a compelling argument in shifting those “old media” $’s and to “trust” our online communities.
Amen, Brother Lance!
[...] Social Nets vs. Portals for ad value - Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle Digital media executives watched throughout 2006 as Web 2.0 asserted Internet users’ creative independence from the media giants. (tags: social-networking portals) [...]