A reader asked today: "Wouldn't the company be bragging about the ContentOne success by now if the (Obama) inauguration trial results had met expectations?" That followed a note I got Wednesday from another reader, who wrote:I don't know if you have heard about it from other sites, but it was a total disaster for us (and a few of the sites we speak to). Gannett required all sites to put their banner at the top of our sites to drive all local page views to their product. Their page had "streaming video" that shut down from noon to 2 p.m. on inauguration day (aka the time we needed it) and showed the parade from terrible vantage points.
Our local traffic suffered tremendously -- we think because of this awful product we had to push. We tried our best with local content -- we even built a local section -- but who would visit that when Gannett's banner is right at the top of the site? We now shudder in fear of their next Content One experiment for March Madness. That's always a good time for us locally (but) maybe not this year. I'd be curious to see how the experiment went from everyone else's point of view. I'm sure CEO Craig Dubow will sell it as a huge success.Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
[Image: cover of the special eight-page print section Corporate built for insertion in Sunday papers Jan. 18]
Tuesday was the lightest traffic day on our site this week with a 5 percent decrease in page views compared to the rest of the week.
ReplyDeleteGood enough is good enough.
ReplyDeleteSo well put 2:30
ReplyDeleteI have two items in my e-mail: One is a report from Max Haot, explaining Mogulus' "disappointing performance" on Tuesday. The other is newsletter from Mogulus that touts its "wide and unprecedented web coverage" on Tuesday. Well? Which is it?
ReplyDeleteActually, Tuesday may have been a good day to experiment with the web. Everyone was in front of a TV.
ReplyDeleteGoogle reported a dramatic drop in people submitting search queries between the time Obama started taking the oath and the time he finished speaking.
(Of course Google also reported dramatic increases in searches during the rest of the day, many of them for streaming videos.)
I made a point of minimizing it so I wouldn't accidentally click into ContentOne. Knowing they were hoping for big numbers, I didn't want to contribute a single click. Plus, from my vantage point, it sucked. I wouldn't have clicked on it even if I didn't know what a boondoggle the whole thing was.
ReplyDeleteIt did not go well.
ReplyDeleteI noticed very little reader commentary on other Obama stories as well. It was a TV Obamathon, not a streaming one. A few readers were frustrated about local news being usurped by the overexposure.
There was also a "memory package" offered. A Nov 5 reprint of the paper, and a couple of other reprints including Inauguration day, all in a nice plastic bag. I think 50 copies were sold, possibly a few more than that.
Any other sites offer a package like that?
content-one was a hit. Say good bye to all the journalists out there. This shit is for free!!!
ReplyDeleteWhoohooooooo! Content-one is the way to go. Freelancers all the way.
At our site in Wisconsin, the online coverage of the inauguration didn't draw many viewers.
ReplyDeleteOur page views on Inauguration day dropped 11% from the prior Tuesday. Our cobranded subsite has received less than 5,000 page views.
ReplyDeleteMogulus was so bad on Tuesday that people in our building switched to Hulu, which provided a large, sharp picture and clear sound.
In our market, people come to us for local news. If they want to read stories from USAToday, they'll go to USAT's website.
Wow, I thought we were the only ones who had issues with ContentOne and how it was rushed. I'm in a red state, so I didn't expect much interest on the web, but it was disappointing even for those who did want to see it.
ReplyDeleteEverything Gannett touches on the web turns to shit. Our page views are half, HALF! what they were before that godawefull page redesign. The highschoolsports.net site sucks beyond reasonable belief, and we still don't have video that preloads.
ReplyDeleteWhat about special edition sales? Any luck there?
ReplyDeleteStill annoyed that the comments count on each story is the last thing to load. If I'm a reader who pops in to see what the hot stories are several times a day, (and I am) it's a lot of wait wait wait. Even at work (where I'm doing my corporate duty pushing up page views) where we have super fast connection speed, it's still a dog.
ReplyDeleteLoad the ads first, then the stuff that changes all the time, THEN the static pieces. Or get rid of Pluck.
It was a dog - we got far more views on the local/wire copy we posted in our 'real' site than on the piece of monkey poop.
ReplyDelete