Posted on 08/08/2005 4:13:34 PM PDT by kristinn
U.S. blog readership in the first quarter jumped 45 percent to 49.5 million people, or one-sixth of the total U.S. population, a report said Monday, suggesting the blogosphere is becoming increasingly alluring to online advertisers.
The increase means 30 percent of U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the quarter, according to the comScore Media Metrix report.
In the quarter, Google’s Blogspot had 19 million unique visitors, which comScore noted was more than big mainstream media sites NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, and WashingtonPost.com. However, these visitors were spread around Blogspot’s millions of individual sites.
As far as advertisers are concerned, blog readers are a desirable demographic—young, wealthy, likely to shop online, and with high-speed Internet connections. They visit 77 percent more web pages than the average Internet user.
The most popular blogs were Free Republic with 3.6 million visitors, Drudge Report with 2.3 million, Fleshbot (a Gawker Media blog) with 1.2 million, followed by Gawker and Fark, both with 1.1 million. Regularly updated blogs won a huge portion of the overall visits. Drudge Report alone had 44.3 million visits.
Most popular were political blogs followed by “hipster” lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, and blogs written by women, comScore noted.
However, blog readership tails off rather quickly, with the majority of blogs having under 100 visitors a day, according to Rick Bruner, director of research for DoubleClick, who co-authored the comScore report.
The comScore data does not address these smaller blogs as many are merged with all the other blogs hosted by the same domain, as in the case of Six Apart’s TypePad. Others simply did not make the cut, as the list was limited to the Top 400 most-trafficked blog domains. All but one of the blog domains used in the report had more than 1,000 unique visitors.
Down the Food Chain
In Mr. Bruner’s opinion, the high price of advertising on top sites will lead companies to “start looking deeper down the food chain for more affordable advertising.” He estimated that about half of total page views on the Internet are to small sites.
Last week, Technorati announced that it had measured 14.2 million blogs, 55 percent of them active, about double the amount in March. The company counted 900,000 new posts per day in July, nearly double the amount in January (see Blogs: 900,000 Posts a Day).
Mr. Bruner said that the Technorati numbers give credence to comScore’s report. But, he said, “They’re not really comparable. Technorati can spider links, but they can’t actually look at traffic.”
An international report that combines blog creation with blog readerships of all sizes has yet to be completed.
The comScore report was sponsored by Six Apart and blog network Gawker Media.
How about both FReepathons AND advertising? why not?
Pikamax> You've posted a total of 6,300 threads and 2,742 replies.
>>>>uh...yah?
If you check in on FR five times in a day, that is five visits. But you are just one "unique visitor" who visited FR five times. Another term is "page view" which is how many times you viewed a new page, which is larger than the number of visits. People looking to inflate their statistics will quote "page views" or "visits." But the true indicator of how many people are visiting a site are is the number of "unique visitors".; Which actually could be higher than the stats show because if both you and your wife visited FR twice (once each) using the same computer, the stats would show just on unique visitor since it is based on logging your computer's IP address.
We're all unique visitors. Some are just more unique than others. Take MurryMom for instance...
So how is Drudge Report considered a blog?
Thanks for this site! It's an honor to be a FReeper!
Ping!
Did you ever notice how often when googling a topic that you find what you were looking for on an FR thread?
I'm glad you asked. Lexis-Nexis is breathtakingly expensive, so unless you are Knight-Ridder, you won't be able to afford it.
The Lexis-Nexis search pay by credit card feature, however, is free. You only pay if you purchase the articles. Thus you can do research such as I performed comparing the number of articles associated with a particular keyword, and find out what those articles are. You can likely go to the original news source web site to get the archived article free or cheaply.
Unfortunately, if there are greater than 1,000 articles Lexis-Nexis will only report that there are too many articles to compile. You don't know if there are 1,001 or 20,001 out there. For example, I put in the search term "Kos", figuring that would capture articles relating to "Daily Kos". There were more than 1,000, but I have no idea how many.
Congratulations to all!
How many views?
Cute Ox, pinged you...didn't know you were here.
What step are you in the program BTW? Just checking.
A unique visitor is a unique address (typically an IP address but usually bundled with other information in case everyone's coming from one IP). A visitor would be perhaps you but if they didn't break it down to unique then you may have 5-10 visits a day. A good unique algorithm will hopefully narrow your 5-10 to 1 'unique' visitor. However, it is actually impossible to get unique visitors unless you use authentication.
The problem with all of these numbers is that they need to be taken with a helluva grain of salt. Unfortunately, they are the best that is available.
http://www.comscore.com/method/method.asp
comScore Methodology
With more than 2 million participants under continuous measurement, the comScore Global Network is the largest consumer panel of its kind, and delivers the most comprehensive view available of consumer activity – both online and offline.
comScore has developed a statistical methodology to ensure the accuracy and reliability of projections to the total population based on its network. Ultimately this provides comScore clients with confidence in the quality of information that drives important business decisions every day.
At the heart of the comScore Global Network is a sample of consumers enlisted via Random Digit Dial (RDD) recruitment - the methodology long endorsed by many market and media researchers. comScore also employs a variety of online recruitment programs, which have been time-tested through the years in which the comScore Global Network has been in operation. The reliance upon comScore services by hundreds of clients stands as testament to the strength and reliability of this combined approach.
Participants in the comScore Global Network receive a package of benefits that have proven to be broadly appealing to all demographic segments:
Server-based virus protection
Attractive sweepstakes prizes
Opportunity to impact and improve the Internet
Participants are protected by industry-leading privacy policies that ensure anonymity of personal information.
Membership is provided through an efficient sign-up process.
All demographic segments of the online population are represented in the comScore Global Network, with large samples of participants in each segment. For example, our network includes hundreds of thousands of high-income Internet users - one of the most desirable and influential groups to measure, yet also one of the most difficult to recruit.
comScore determines the size and characteristics of the total online population via a continuous survey spanning tens of thousands of persons over the course of a year. The sample of participants in this enumeration survey is selected via RDD methodology. Respondents are asked a variety of questions about their Internet use, as well as descriptive information about themselves and their households. The result is an accurate and up-to-date picture of the universe to which the comScore sample is projected.
The resulting combination of large samples across all segments, and a reliable view of the total universe, allows comScore to eliminate the effects of over- or under-representation of any group in the network.
comScore services are based either on the complete Global Network database or from components relevant to client needs. For example, comScore's industry-leading, RDD-based Media Metrix 2.0 audience measurement system is founded upon 120,000 U.S. panelists. Media Metrix Global Services are produced using the behavior of 500,000 panelists outside of the U.S. And Media Metrix XPC (eXPanded Coverage) adds visibility of smaller Web sites and local market activity through data captured from the balance of the comScore panel.
comScore's Statistical Services team is comprised of industry experts with decades of experience in the unique science of continuously projecting sample-based data for consumer research.
For more information about comScore Networks methodology, please contact info@comscore.com.
Is there a “zot” graph in ther somewhere?
Advertising on FR is out in its current form.
FR depends on the 'Fair Use' laws to allow publication of articles from copyrighted sources. True, we've lost a battle with the LA Times and Washington Post and have to excerpt their work, and we have a long list of other sources who've jumped on the bandwagon.
Accepting any kind of compensation would preclude FR from being what it is.
Jim can correct me if I'm wrong
community.
It is actually more complex than just the IP address. Several fields are combined to try and narrow it down even further.
Comscore isn't an IP tracking service. It's a recruited consumer panel who agree to share their web surfing habits. It's like Nielsen's TV ratings, but much better from a recruiting and sample quality standpoint.
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