Ad Sales Blog

How accurate are website traffic numbers from syndicated research companies?

At the Worldwide Readership Research Symposium held last last year in Spain, four online ad experts presented a research paper that should send a shiver down the back of any media buyer or seller's spine. The paper reviewed the methodologies and results from popular syndicated research companies, like Quatcast, Compete, and ComScore. The websites of these companies, and others like them, provide a service (often free at the lowest level of participation) that estimates website traffic for any website URL you type into them. These services are very popular with both media buyers and sellers. Here's the catch: they use different methodologies and can come up with significantly different numbers for the exact same website. Oops. 

 When the paper compared some actual website numbers here is what they came up with:

The paper authors, Dick Bennett of ImServices Ltd, Steve Douglas from DJG Marketing, Bruce Rogers from Forbes, and Gerard Broussard from Pre-Meditated Media raise a big question of just how accurate the traffic numbers that these services provide might be.  

The paper also shared a "Consumer Reports" style look under the hood of these services, showing detailed and contrasting methodologies being used by each. I recommend you read a review of the methodology of any service whose numbers you using:  

Download and read the entire paper: http://www.readershipsymposium.org/online-measurement-%E2%80%93-too-many-numbersrelationships

A boost to sell your online news products

If you are selling any kind of newsletters, if your website has a basic news design, or if you are sponsoring any webcasts that have a news or current affairs focus, here is a great factoid to share with your advertisers to reinforce the value of what you sell.  

In just the past few months the number of Americans who pick the Internet as their top choice for National and International news had almost doubled, enabling the Internet to surpass Newspapers as the second most preferred news media. With young people Internet sources are almost tied with the top choice, television.

Although Pew does not mention this, it would be hard to imagine that the recent National elections may have helped focus people on where they really prefer to get news.

From the study:

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the Internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

For young people, however, the Internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news on line; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the Internet (68% vs. 34%).

On a call.

Share this as passing a benchmark, which it is. "Hey did you hear that the number of people who use the Internet as their top source for news almost doubled in the past five months? Internet news sources, for the first time ever, passed newspapers and are only behind television. Glad you are running ads in our online news product? See? You are keeping up with the times!"

 Download the report to take on a call:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1066/internet-overtakes-newspapers-as-news-source

 

Why does your site exist?

Why does your site exist?

On a sales call, how do you answer this question? Many media reps jump into a canned pitch about the power of their print originated brand franchise and how their website extends the franchise online.

Baloney.

Media buyers, are driven by "What's in if it for me," and the best print brand does not guarantee online results.

The online word is results and measurement driven. You have to explain the functional benefit behind your online media first. Then go one to explain how this function can generate measurable results. Start with an explanation of what your website or online media DOES for it's visitors.

A great post on today's "Online Metrics Insider" lays out a guide for categorizing the functional benefit of a website for people who measure web performance. They need this as much as we do. If you can't functionally define a web visitor benefit you cannot evaluate a web sites result, nor can you explain the advertising benefit of that site to a media buyer.

From the post:

Your Web site exists for a purpose, perhaps multiple purposes, such as:

Providing information or data. Many sites entice people to visit for access to valuable, differentiated information or data. Traffic is then monetized primarily through site advertising. Many internal and external analytics packages will tell you where visitors come from and what they do on site, which, when combined with demographic information, can be used to qualify a specific audience to an advertiser.

Generating leads. A content asset is placed on a site and gated using a form. People fill out the form and download the asset. The information captured in the form is stored and used by the company that generated the leads or profitably sold to another company.

Selling products. The typical e-commerce model involves acquiring customers via some method or offer, providing a product catalog or landing page, and creating a strong call to action and funnel that persuades people to purchase a product.

Connecting people. The explosion of social networking sites where people connect to other people, interact with each other, and use widgets, apps, and data services, is a modern phenomenon in which many of us participate.

Read the entire post on the Media Post's "Online Metic Insider"

Why being "likeable" counts

Sales lesson from the campaign trail #2:

Hilary Clinton, behind in delegates and the polls for the Democratic Presidential nomination is taking the offensive. Shown here today taking to task a Barack Obama campaign brochure she claims spreads misinformation about her health care program.

How will voters react?

Voters will react as they always do; ignoring criticism about people they like and embracing it against people they don't.

It is easy to forget that few American Presidents were more widely criticized than Ronald Reagan, but it all just slid off the likable "Teflon President" without a scratch. The minimally funded Swift Boat attacks of the 2004 Presidential election stuck to John Kerry like glue who many demonized having criticized American Vietnam policy, and seemingly to many, the troops as well.

Hilary's case will stick not on merit, but on how likable voters perceive her Vs. Obama to be. Judging by how well her campaign's "plagiarism" criticism stuck last week I would guess not well.

On your next sales call you may think that being likable is not so important, after all we now sell in the measurable world of digital media. Aren't results more important than everything? Think again. On the surface your clients are rational business people, but when criticism flies people are more likely to evaluate on the emotional side. They will ask, "Do I like them, do I trust them?" The next time something goes wrong (and something always does) how much will stick to you will depend on how well liked you and your organization are.   

Paul Simon said it all in the Lyrics to his 1968 song "The Boxer" when he wrote,

"All lies and jest. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Your new competitive website stats...link counts?

The number of links your website has is a powerful metric used to determine its vitality.

Links??

Yes! If you have a stronger website over a competitor you can easily access comparative link tallies through  Google or Yahoo and make a competitive case.

To get the tallies go to Google or Yahoo and type in: "link: your website URL" ("link" followed by a colon,  then a space, followed your website address. i.e. "link: www.broadcastengineering.com".

Hit enter or search. The number of links that search service has associated with your website will appear. Now do the same for your competition.

On a call:

Before you present your comparative link numbers you will need to presell the idea of "links" as an important web metric.

"Big deal!" your advertiser might say. But on the web links ARE a big deal. Who you are linked to, and who those you are linked to are linked to is one of the top metrics search engines use to determine the ranking of a website. The more and better quality the links a website has the higher it will appear on a search result. Moving to the top of a Google or Yahoo search is a prime goal of every commercially viable website.

Need proof? Dan Crow is a well known “Search” expert and former director of “crawl” services at Google. He now travels the globe speaking to webmasters who are looking to increase their website ranking on search services. He tells his audiences to focus on four areas: having relevant content, building user involvement, actively involving the search engines, and having many and high quality links. 

Of the four, "links" offers the only hard measurement of the vitality of a website that is easily compared.

Read a review of a Dan Crow speech:

http://www.searchmatters.net/2007/08/06/seo-best-practices-from-a-google-engineer/

After you sell the idea that the link count of a website is a vital metric, preset your comparative numbers to make your case.

Go Google or Yahoo to get started

Thanks to Jon Chalon, Vice President, Entertainment Technology Division Group Publisher, Broadcast Engineering & Radio Magazine, for sending this one in.

If you know of any great websites or studies media sales people can use please send them in!

 

"Why advertise on your website when mine is bigger?"

Welcome to your newest competitor...the website of the company you are trying to sell. I was surprised when I first got hit with this objection, but the advertiser had a point. It was a major corporate account, one of largest in the industry I was selling in. Just after I presented the case for advertising on my publication's website he said abruptly, "My site attracts five times the traffic as yours, and all of them are current or potential customers. I'm putting my money into my website, not yours."

The point my  advertiser missed had to do with objectivity. While buyers will use an advertiser's web site to gather information, no one expects it to be objective. A company that sells a product may not always offer unbiased, objective product information. On the net, skeptics rule.

A study released in the Health Services industry backs this up. The survey conduced by Prospectiv  documents that the Internet was the overwhelmingly the most trusted and reliable resource for researching ailment and drug information, beating out broadcast media and magazines by a large margin.

Seventy-five percent of 800 consumers who responded to Prospectiv's 2007 Pharmaceutical Marketing CPI poll said they view the Internet as their most trusted resource for ailment and drug treatment information, followed by broadcast media (15 percent) and magazines (10 percent).

But the kind of Websites used was revealing. Consumers favored general health web sites to pharmaceutical company sites by a huge margin.

General health web sites 54 %
Specific ailment-focused sites 37 %
Pharmaceutical company sites 4 %

Your advertiser may offer very accurate information, but buyers want the objectivity that comes from a third party. Here is where your publication's brand comes in. When your advertiser's message comes through a trusted sources like the ones you sell it will have that extra credibility.

How to use this on a call:

Print out the article I link to below on the MediaBuyerPlanner website with the article headline,

"Websites, but Not Pharma's, Top Resource for Ailment and Drug information Information."

Show it to an advertiser and explain this came from a media planners webiste. Use it to explain the survey and establish credibility.

Now show the down load of the actual poll questions themselves. It's a Word file. Just show them the numbers about readers preferring general content sites as opposed to Phara sites. It should be convincing enough.

If there are doubts about the sampling methodology, don't worry it actually works in your favor. These questions were asked of Prespectiv maintained panels of opted in consumers that they maintain for corporate clients. If anything, since these consumers opted in to be on a panel for corporate use, one would think they would have an above average toleration for corporate web sites. Turns out it makes no difference. More on the methodology on the lat page of the download.

If you don't sell in a health service industry you may need to take one step further. Explain that this is one example, of many, of where skepticism on the Web drives traffic toward independently sourced content.

Link to an article describing the study with "the headline"

Download an abbreviated version of the survey containing the questions discussed above: Download prospectiv_pharma_poll_june_2007_posting.doc

Research results on the Prospectiv website

Is your web traffic ready to "compete"?

"Compete.com" makes a bold claim. Enter any URL into it's search type interface and it will  deliver web site visitation statistics for that site. This is an amazing sales tool if you are looking for a way to compare the web traffic of your site to a competitor's.

But is it accurate?

The numbers that compete.com delivers are not actual visitation statistics, but projections based on a panel of over 2 million web users;

"Based on the daily web usage of more than two million members (and growing!) of the Compete community, Compete calculates and estimates total traffic and rank for nearly every site on the web. We use rigorous statistics to make sure our estimates balance demographic and connection factors that match the entire U.S. Internet population."

Since the sample of tracked users is in the two million range, smaller web sites will likely fall bellow their radar.
Accurate? I say, accurate enough for a sales call and accurate enough to start or deepen a customer dialog.

Give Compete.com a try with your competition's URL

Compete.com: "Where do these traffic numbers come from?"