USA Today's 1.9 million in circulation accounts for a third of Gannett's overall. But the company's top daily is also the big kahuna in the company's overall web traffic, too,
a newly disclosed company document shows.
In April -- the most recent month available --
USAT drew 35% of the total 95 million unique visitors across the Gannett network. And it accounted for 21% of the approximately one billion page views readers racked up during the month. In both cases,
The Arizona Republic -- the company's No. 2 paper by circulation -- was a distant second in terms of its share of overall traffic.
Unlike the dailies in the U.S. Community Publishing division,
USA Today's audience is nationwide, so it gives the company network a broader footprint -- making the overall network that much more appealing to national advertisers such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever and General Mills.
The breakdown of April's figures, by major business unit:
Unique visitors: 95.2 million
- USCP: 48%
- USAT: 35%
- Broadcasting: 14%
- Other: 3%
Page views: one billion
- USCP: 68%
- USAT: 21%
- Broadcasting: 10%
- Other: 1%
... and this shows why USAT's future is digital, but the future of the community papers -- particularly those in small- to mid-sized markets -- is in print (for some time to come). The only way to make money online (at least right now) while maintaining a sizeable staff is by catering to a huge, nationwide audience. You would have thought the bigwigs would have figured this out long ago.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is thast Gannett/USA Today's crack sales staff has never been able to convince advertisers that the combined total, which is inpressive, is worth anything.
ReplyDeleteIt is much like a bad 3G coverage map -- advertisers are not convinced places like Salinas, Lansing and Louisville really add up to that much. And agencies who live in New York know the second-rate natue of the Lo-Hud Valley approach online.
Until Gannett can get a foothold in places like Boston, L.A., Chicago, Atlanta, there's little hope the sell-it-all-as-one-footprint strategy can work. But still they chase this false hope.
@Anon 10:39: Your comments are a bit broad and not entirely accurate. There is, in fact, a ton of money to be made [at a highly profitable rate] in local online advertising. Perhaps what you're referring to is that current GCI properties are not properly organized to do so. Nor is the talent pool there among publishers, directors or sales people to extract that money from local markets. Nor has GCI aligned itself with any meaningful products (outside of perhaps autos and recruiting) that local advertisers care to engage. One simple example is the sale of behaviorally targeted online display ads. Other newspapers companies have made a big deal of rolling this out to the sales force and they've posted -- in some cases -- eight-figure YoY gains. Where is GCI on this?
ReplyDeleteUSA TODAY's web traffic compared to Gannett is hardly a "new gorilla" but I agree with 12:21 that the attempt to combine the two hasn't worked at all, and probably never will.
ReplyDeleteAgencies want a big reliable national profile not a hodgepodge of local "public access cable" buys, which is what many of the Gannett properties amount to.
If you were a national advertiser, would you waste time booking ads with a newspaper chain's websites, or would you just go through a third-party and target a demo.
ReplyDeleteLooks like the question got answered for me.
You can make the argument that The Arizona Republic generating 40% of the traffic that USAT does despite not playing to a national audience is doing a much better job of connecting with its market and should be the model for all of GCI's local web sites.
ReplyDeleteAgreed with 3:38 that AZ's pageview counts are certainly impressive.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with a GCI-wide network-buy is that it's not going to extend the total reach of an advertiser's campaign. Most USCP users are either of a relatively low-value demographic (Obit-lovers) or would all ready be reached by a campaign running on YAHOO, MSN or even USATODAY.
Thankfully, privacy is dead and audience-information collected on one site will be available to target advertising on any site. This should increase the value of the Long Tail audience.
1:34 -- Give me an example of a highly profitable, Web-only news organization serving a small- to mid-sized community.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about Web advertising ventures with local components, like Cars.com. I'm also not talking about Craig's List. I'm talking about a true news outlet that requires more than one or two reporters to generate content.
The online only paper in San Diego, CA, might be an example but I don't know whether it's turned a profit yet. Also, San Diego is a large market, so it would have a far better chance of supporting a full newsroom than, say, Salinas.
Gannett isn't the only company that has failed to turn profits off of its newsroom products on the Web.
It is amazing that with all that traffic and the UsaToday "dot com" business only does $20 million in ad sales revenue (2009). USAToday has some of the lowest cpm's in the online industry because almost half of it is unsold and they are having third party ad networks selling the ads on their site for pennies on the dollar.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, David Hunke continues to throw in free online ads to print advertisers.
The whole ad sales in UsaToday is one big Madoff ponzi scheme led by a Detroit insider.
4:59: If it did not divulge my identity I would provide you the URL of a non-GCI operation [mine...] whose recent reorganization and subsequent refocus on digital publishing allowed it to knock down a very large batch of ad dollars that, in turn, vaulted the entire operation into excellent profitability. The strength of the sales were on the digital audience assembled and not a print component which we now use only for promotion of the online product. It can be done. It just can't be done within GCI as presently organized or managed.
ReplyDelete12:14 -- I wish I knew where you were talking about. But if that's true, it's very good news. Here's hoping others in the industry have similar success. We certainly need models like the one you mention in order to keep journalism alive.
ReplyDelete