ibNow: April 2009

Helping Users Find Their Way To You

A Look At How Users Get To Your Site

By: Arul Sundaram, VP Business Strategy

We spend a great deal of time working with our partners to ensure that your sites deliver a quality experience to your users. Equally as important is the way in which the user got to your site in the first place. We’ve gathered together some secondary and primary data to help our partners understand the distribution landscape in general, and then put together some factors to consider when mapping out your own distribution strategy.

First, some context: On April 8, 2009, Hitwise released statistics about the overall news and information category. The data set indicates that News and Information sites generally receive 20% of their traffic from search engines, 20% from other news sites and 10% – 15% from portal front pages such as Google News or Yahoo News.

IB took this analysis a step further, moving from the general “News and Information” category to the more specific “Local News” category. We evaluated comScore Source/Loss data for newspaper and TV station websites in 10 select markets for January 2008 and January 2009. We drew four pieces of learning from our analysis:

Search drives about one-third of all traffic to local media sites.
In Jan 2008, search represented 31.8% of local media visits, and it grew to 32.1% in Jan 2009. According to comScore, IB sites see approximately 20% of visits coming from Search. This lower share is due in large part to the significant amount of traffic IB sites receive from CNN.com.
Newspapers are starting to see real traffic lift from their Yahoo partnership.
When you factor out search, newspaper sites grew 20% from January 2008 to January 2009, while visits to TV stations were, at best, flat to modestly up. Where’s the growth coming from for newspaper sites? Mostly from the Yahoo content-sharing relationship. While much of the traffic Yahoo drives is out-of-market, the participating sites benefit from the one-two punch of increased total unique visitors, plus the ability to sell local uniques on the Yahoo Network.
Newspaper sites still dominate local traffic and search referrals.
The newspaper category consistently outdrew the TV category in visitors, capturing between 53% (Jan 2008) to 58% (Jan 2009) of all visit traffic. This is because newspaper sites consistently outperform local TV sites in search referrals. Non-search visits between were split fairly evenly between the TV and newspaper categories. But newspaper sites recorded 65% – 68% of search visits to local media sites. Below we’ll have some recommendations on how to better compete for those visits.
TV station sites are improving their SEO capabilities.
comScore does show that TV sites are improving their SEO capabilities. In Jan 2008, newspaper sites got twice as much search traffic as TV sites (40.6% of newspaper traffic came from search, while only 21.7% of TV site traffic came from search). By Jan 2009, that gap had closed: newspaper sites’ traffic share from search fell to 36.0% while TV’s share from search grew to 26.7%. Some of this is due to the drop-off in CNN traffic to IB sites (making search share grow by default), but comScore also does show that both IB and non-IB station site search traffic did grow in the absolute.

IB’s recommendations:

Make the most of IB’s CNN.com relationship.
IB has dedicated editors constantly scouring for great stories to submit to CNN.com, but they need help from station newsrooms. Currently, only about 50% of the stories that make it to the CNN.com home page were proactively submitted by a local journalist. IB recommends reminding newsroom management of this opportunity to grow traffic. We have a well-documented process for submitting stories for consideration. Any station needing a refresher on best practices for optimizing the CNN.com relationship should contact Dave Peters: dpeters@ibsys.com. In the meantime, stories for CNN.com should be submitted to cnnlinks@ibsys.com
Take SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seriously.
Write search-friendly headlines, use keywords, create subheadlines: These and other SEO best practices are part of “basic training” for new IB editors. But as more TV station staff become web publishers, these simple but powerful habits need to spread throughout local newsrooms. IB will soon be introducing a new series of reporting tools and training modules focused on SEO best practices. The aim of this initiative is to give stations the tools and expertise to maximize their content’s exposure to search traffic. For more about this training, contact Dave Michela: dmichela@ibsys.com. In addition, you may ask IB’s SEO team to provide input and recommendations on improving station SEO practices. This work can be accomplished using research hours where available, or may be scoped as a custom engagement.
Look for ways to increase your breadth of local content.
One reason newspaper sites typically outperform local TV sites in search referrals is that newspaper sites simply have more local, unique content. More local content equals more things for search engines to find, and therefore better search performance. So how do you add more local content without tripling your staff? Consider content sources like PR wires, local government databases, and local aggregators. Press releases are perhaps the easiest place to start: content is free and can be accessed via APIs from the various wire services such as BusinessWire or PRNewswire. Many national sites already include PR content in their news sections (e.g., Yahoo, Marketwatch), and a number of local sites are starting to deliver on this as well (e.g., Tribune Broadcasting sites). The content flows automatically onto your site and should ultimately stimulate search performance. Content from the Associated Press can help fill out your site, but search engines know that it’s not unique. Topping off an AP story with a fresh headline and lead paragraph, then interjecting some original reporting, can help you stand apart from (and above) the competition.
Take your content to the people.
Only so many visitors will come to your site out of habit, so it’s crucial to meet them in places they already frequent. Use RSS feeds to automatically populate your content to Facebook and Twitter, and manually submit the clickers to Digg, Reddit, Drudge and Fark. Develop relationships with local bloggers and build inbound links from relevant sources in the community. The more places your headlines can be seen, the more click-throughs you’ll get — from both humans and search engine spiders.

i comScore and Hitwise collect data from different sources, so comparing the two sets of numbers can pose problems. comScore Source/Loss data is also often at odds with our own WebTrends logs. Despite those caveats, though, comScore Source/Loss data does represent a universal benchmark through which we can evaluate industry-wide data.

ii Albuquerque: ABQJournal, KOAT, KOB, KRQE; Atlanta: 11Alive, AJC, CBS46, MyFOXAtlanta, WSBtv: , Baltimore: ABC2News; Baltimore Sun, MyFOXBaltimore, WBALtv, WJZ; Boston: Boston, MyFOXBoston, NECN, TheBostonChannel, WBZtv, WHDH, WMUR; Detroit: ClickOnDetroit, DetNews, Freep, Mlive, MyFoxDetroit, WXYZ; Greensboro: DigTriad, JournalNow, MyFoxWGHP, NewsRecord, WXII12; Kansas City: KansasCity, KCTV5, KMBC, MyFoxKC, NBCActionNews; Milwaukee: CBS58, JSOnline, MyFoxMilwaukee, TodaysTMJ4, WISN; Nashville: NewsChannel5, Tennesseean, WKRN, WSMV; Seattle: KING5, KIROtv, KOMOtv, NWSource

iii The comScore findings for IB search traffic differ significantly from IB’s internal WebTrends data. This discrepancy is due to comScore’s panel methodology. As a result, comScore and WebTrends data should not be compared against each other.

Inside The Mind Of The Advertiser

Getting The Scoop Straight From The Buyer’s Mouth

By: Luke Edson, Chief Revenue Officer

Recently, Margee Anderson, Vice President of National Sales, and I invited some of the premier advertisers in the U.S. to a series of focus groups. The results confirmed that participation in IB’s premium ad network positions IB’s publisher partners to take full advantage of advertiser demand for quality local audiences.

Buyers are looking for:

Market-wide reach

Quality consumers on quality sites

Targeting, targeting and more targeting

A single dashboard for reporting

Creative sponsorship opportunities, meaningful content adjacencies and robust vertical products

Advertiser confusion as to how to buy local still exists, creating an opportunity for IB and our customers. While there are hundreds of ad networks out there, we are positioned – alongside our ad network partners – to leapfrog the competition by making it easy for the buyer.

Buyers report wanting to use premium ad networks (not portals or blind ad networks) that solve all of their needs: a one-stop shop including all of the premium sites they need to achieve their goals for market reach. They require multi-level targeting capabilities to efficiently focus their messages to better qualified prospects. Scalable access to premium local sites, with their quality audiences, will be the determining success factor.

Other key findings:

Good ideas and creativity are appreciated and rewarded. While ad units are sometimes viewed as commodities, advertisers still look for the creative programs with demonstrable ROI. Unlike other ad networks, IB has years of experience creating successful local programs for advertisers.

There is an unlimited amount of supply in the market. The differentiators are quality and reach. Again – IB’s network of sites is second to none.

There is currently no upward price momentum in the market. The economy and the proliferation of inventory combine to make pricing very challenging.

Advertisers are increasingly interested in performance measurement, impacting both the pricing mechanism and the importance of reach in securing the business.

For you, our publishing partner, participation in the IB Local Network is a way to extract maximum value from inventory that might otherwise go underutilized.

The IB/comScore Advantage

Using Competitive Intelligence To Drive Sales

By: Scott Hagen, Corporate Metrics Analyst

Whether the goal is to increase sales or land a specific client, competitive intelligence is a cornerstone of the strategic sales process. Knowing how you stack up against your competition, and how to use that information to your advantage, helps you write the solution that will address your advertising clients’ needs.

IB’s partnership with comScore for local market intelligence lets you customize your competitive data set to ensure your sales team has the information they need to tell the best story. Here’s how: IB provides comScore reports twice monthly. Our metrics team sifts through mountains of data and organizes it to highlight the essential metrics typically recognized universally by all market competitors. The first monthly release provides data from comScore’s national sample. We provide a second, updated report each month when comScore releases their local market data.

In addition to the absolute numbers, IB’s reports provide you with ranking data so you can easily see how your site performs relative to others. Equally as important, IB gives individual stations the option to choose the sites against which they’d like to be compared. Our default set includes the local TV station sites for each DMA, along with any other major local media properties like the newspaper site(s). But maybe your clients are asking how you stack up to local radio sites as well. Maybe you need to know how your site ranks versus Yahoo news in your DMA. IB can provide that information. Just send an e-mail to researchrequest@ibsys.com and one of our metrics team members will contact you to discuss your customization options.

IB’s comScore reports also provide a 13-month trailing average. comScore’s methodology, combined with the sometimes volatile traffic patterns associated with news and information sites, may result in significant traffic fluctuation from month to month. We provide you with a year’s worth of measurement in every report, so that your sellers can easily monitor and analyze trends.

We strongly encourage local sales, marketing and research teams to take full advantage of the competitive intelligence offered via IB’s custom comScore reports. To make sure you’re getting the most out of your reports, send an e-mail to researchrequest@ibsys.com with your questions and customization requests.

IB And AP Deliver

Premium Content Sets IB Sites Apart From Competition

By: Dave Michela, VP Account Management

IB’s new investment in AP’s top-of-the-line “Premium Online” and “Video Complete” services came to life on our network of sites this month, providing our publisher partners with the highest-quality national and world news. And we’re doing it faster than we’ve ever been able to before. As Nancy Cassutt explained in last month’s newsletter, this new level of service dramatically increases both the quality and volume of content IB’s national team is able to provide. How much more content? How about 250% more stories, 2000% more images and 280% more video — all at no additional cost to our customer publishers. A reminder on the details:

The new service came in handy as soon as it was implemented. IB customers benefitted fast and rich coverage of the earthquake in Italy, the G20 summit and the pirate incident off the Somali coast – all fast-developing stories which became water-cooler fodder and spawned local angles in many markets. IB’s national editors mix AP’s building blocks with original content and stories submitted by local station sites to provide a richer context around the day’s stories, as in this example from Tax Day. The result: a better product for you, your consumers and your advertisers.

The quality and reliability of IB’s national content frees local newsrooms to focus their efforts on local, knowing that when a big story breaks somewhere in the world, it will be on your site. It’s a differentiating factor setting your site apart from your local competition. And IB is pleased to have once again raised the bar.

If you have any questions about the new Premium Online service, please contact Dave Peters: dpeters@ibsys.com.