Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Drudge Moves Internet Traffic like no other.

You gotta give the man his credit.
He has done to News information on the internet what Rush Limbaugh has done to radio. Completely transformed it from multiple sites and lots of searching to 1 place to find your daily headlines that are of importance and skip the smaller news.

Its so basic its scary how successful it has become and continues to be. I myself go to Drudge before I go to any other site for news. Its just that convenient.


Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge and the Daily Mail make an unlikely alliance. But the mercurial founder of influential US website the Drudge Report has played a pivotal, if unwitting, role in the overnight success of dailymail.co.uk, which last month shocked many on Fleet Street by taking second place in its first appearance in the ABCe online readership figures.

The Mail's 11.8 million unique users in July put it ahead of telegraph.co.uk and Times Online, but behind Guardian Unlimited - owned by The Observer's parent company, Guardian Media Group.

The measure was introduced to provide advertisers with an accurate guide to the popularity of Britain's growing newspaper websites. But the Mail's rivals claim around a third of traffic was generated by referrals from the Drudge Report, which shot to prominence when it broke stories about the Monica Lewinsky affair a decade ago.

'We counted 36 Daily Mail stories on Drudge during July,' says Edward Roussel, the Telegraph's digital editor. Publicity for the Mail on Sunday's free Prince CD pushed huge numbers of users towards dailymail.co.uk, while other popular stories, including several about David and Victoria Beckham's move to LA, also played well with the US audience. 'It's testament to the power of Drudge,' says Roussel. It is also a tribute to the power of the Mail's journalism, of course, as Roussel readily concedes. 'They write stories with global appeal - terror stories and showbiz stories in particular.'

But the Mail's ABCe success has reignited a fierce war of words among media owners about the way news site figures are measured. The three main ratings agencies - Nielsen NetRatings, Hitwise and ABCe - all measure slightly different things, and it was only the Mail's popularity abroad that catapulted it to second spot; UK users accounted for just 22 per cent of hits. The Daily Telegraph prefers to trumpet Hitwise's data, which bases its figures on UK users and defines a news site more narrowly, arguing that it is more accurate. Hitwise also happens to be the only one that consistently places telegraph.co.uk at the top of its rankings, which allows the paper to run adverts claiming it is the most popular news website in the country.

Guardian Unlimited has long published figures for advertisers to scrutinise and Tim Brooks, managing direction of Guardian Newspapers Ltd, says: 'Everybody in the internet business knows the Telegraph's claim to be the most popular news website in the UK is nonsense.'

The Mail's Martin Clarke, who launched London Lite, Associated's free evening paper in the capital and is tipped as a possible successor to Mail editor Paul Dacre, is in charge of the web operation. He says UK users are far more valuable than overseas readers, despite the fact that 78 per cent of page impressions come from abroad (the equivalent figure for the Telegraph is around 40 per cent). 'Advertisers at the moment are most concerned with UK traffic. Its great to have international visitors and its great the internet's such an international phenomenon, but in economic terms you can't [convert] it into revenue. It's pointless everyone judging themselves by traffic that no one can quite work out how to monetise.'

But Clarke points out that dailymail.co.uk's domestic growth has also been impressive, increasing by 14 per cent in July compared with the same month last year. Crucially, it is just not just silver surfers that account for its success. 'The website is expanding the Mail's demographic reach: 60 per cent of visitors are ABC1s, and over half are aged 18-24. It's the market advertisers want - affluent and young. We also have a female bias, as you'd expect given our heritage.'

The Mail site now boasts 2.55 million unique users in the UK, although that places it well below the Telegraph, Times and Guardian on most measurements. As one senior industry figure concedes: 'It's very confusing for advertisers when they see two - or indeed three - separate [analyses] being bandied around. And media owners' understandable habit of shouting about the numbers which show them in the best light doesn't help.'

What is beyond dispute, however, is that the overall market is growing and British papers are finding a new audience in the English-speaking world. After years of gloom about falling circulations, one senior industry source says that, at least, is welcome news. 'Britain doesn't lead the world at much. We should celebrate our success in this field.'

Any collective euphoria is likely to prove short-lived in a notoriously competitive industry. The Mail's performance in the ABCe index alarmed rivals, which had always felt its parent Associated had been slow to innovate online. 'In isolation it's a slightly shocking figure,' Clarke concedes, but he says there has been 'solid, steady growth' since the Mail and its Sunday sister title started to integrate its online operation into the newsroom last spring.

Placing Clarke, who remains associate editor at the Daily Mail, in charge of the group's internet operation last year was a statement of intent. Although Associated has invested heavily in the digital world, buying several websites to hold on to advertising revenue that is migrating online, Clarke says: 'Editorially we were a bit slower. But we have always kept a watching brief and the economics of the digital world have changed.'

A new site built from scratch will launch in a few months and it will make use of video footage and user-generated content, he adds, but the Mail's approach will continue to be low-key. 'We tend to just get on with the job. We don't show tourists round our news hub,' he says.

That is a thinly disguised dig at the Telegraph, which has invested heavily in its state-of-the-art newsroom and is happy to show it off to industry executives. Clarke's assertion that Associated's 'market-leading' papers will always be given priority over the website could also be construed as a shot across the bows of his rivals: 'You don't want to distract a specialist reporter from covering a story to record a podcast that will be listened to by one man and his dog. It's important not to do things just because the technology allows you to.'

The Telegraph's Roussel retorts: 'We had a global growth rate of 63 per cent year on year in July and 78 per cent year on year in the UK. If we hadn't been so evangelical we wouldn't have those figures.' But he agrees with Clarke that UK users are the only ones that count. 'That's really where the value of the business resides and that's what will pay journalists' salaries and meet the cost of newsrooms. We need to get [foreign hits] in perspective. The idea that British newspapers can take on the best US newspapers in their home market is hubristic and misplaced. We're minor brands in the US and we will remain minor brands.'

Overseas readers are, at the very least, an added bonus, but the domestic market continues to grow rapidly and in a sense everyone is winning at the moment. The real battle will commence in 18 months time, when the growth of broadband penetration begins to slow down - as in the US - and the established players begin a fight to protect their online readership in a more mature market.

'We're 18 months behind the US and we will fight voraciously when that time comes,' says the same senior industry source. In the meantime, he argues, British papers should be thankful they are making an impact on a global scale - even if some of them may have Matt Drudge to thank for it.

Global leaders

British newspaper websites are popular overseas because they enjoy a reputation for fearless journalism. But they also have another obvious advantage - they are written in English. The Guardian was one of the first newspapers to enthusiastically embrace the new medium, and has established a significant lead over its domestic rivals. In the US, the New York Times is the second most popular news website behind CNN.com, according to web information company Alexa, and the 30th most popular website. The internet versions of upmarket British newspapers are also popular in America - the Telegraph is the 11th most popular news site in the US . But the BBC News website is only just behind the NYT and the corporation's strength in its domestic market continues to pose the biggest challenge to UK newspapers.

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