RSS didn't kill the homepage

So ... 4 years ago it was predicted that the humble homepage would start to die a slow death as aggregation technology allowed used to tailor their own experience, and thus ... their true 'home'. RSS was going to kill the homepage star.

Thing is - the homepage in AU isn't dying. It's more popular than ever.

All of the main homepages are up year on year - ninemsn, The Age, SMH, News and Yahoo!7. Note - this is more about a unique user figure deduplicated over a month period. I don't know whether they are spending more time or visiting more often.

Yahoo!7 has intentionally pushed people through to its homepage - if you watch a 7 show it generally pushes you to the yahoo7.com.au domain and asks you to search for the show title you were watching. This doesn't sit well with me - it inflates their search numbers and seems a lazy way to increase numbers.

Of the RSS aggregators - My Yahoo is losing users year on year ... however iGoogle has grown 100% during the same period.

It surprises me that homepages are still strong. Maybe it's habitual or maybe AU net users like them being a cluttered mess or editorial, display ads and advertorial. Sure, they are good for reach for certain campaigns and generally they offer a solus display ad unit ... but contextually they offer nothing.

Will be interesting to see how the homepage is fairing in 4 years time.

Ad Overload? 19 ads on a page!

Today the front page of The Age.com.au had 19 advertising messages on it.

And this doesn't include pushes to Fairfax's own network of sites outside of The Age.

I don't think I'm alone in saying this is a tad excessive.

And it concerns me as an advertiser who has used this placement in the past of really how effective my ad might be when it's competing for attention against 18 other ad messages as well as the content.

I've always found it interesting that every year these 'premium' (their words) placements increase in price, but each year more advertising noise is added to the pages.

Exploit

News is at it again with lightening fast SEM response to the death of Heath Ledger.

Type Heath Ledger into Google and News is using paid search to drive traffic to their site. The copy alleges it was an overdose ... it even has an exclamation mark (!)

The media hysteria was reported in depth on todays Crikey - and one interesting thing is TMZ.com has been seen as the definitive authority on the death ... they broke the story and are breaking most developments.

Most of the coverage on the local sites is based around what is being reported overseas, or footage/content from recent articles.

You have to ask - is this a desperate grab for page impressions and revenue or legitimate news?

The Age had a major whoops with their headline to the left (pic taken from Crikey) ... and if you look further down they are also running with video footage of Amy Winehouse smoking crack!

Is 08 the year we see the portals go trashy(er)?

Slow news day over at theage.com.au

It must be if they are trumpeting this video as a 'hit' with rail fans

The video - http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bDd1dUQVGw4 - has had all of 1,708 views ... hardly newsworthy and hardly a youtube success.

The journo even increases his word count by putting the entire lyrics of this not-so-hilarious parody within the article.

Terrible article link - http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/21/1200764138918.html

Bravo!

Cricket - Who is winning the online battle?

It's obvious this year that cricket is being taken more seriously than ever by the publishers.

It makes sense, it is a good match for online as most games are played whilst people are at work - so many rely on digital channels to get the info on how much Australia is smacking the opposition by. ;)

So who is winning the war?

Well - it's tough to work out ... Neilsen Market Intelligence only allows you to split sites by category (ie sport) ... below are figures for December 07

Rank Site Domestic UBs per month (UBs per day)

1. Foxsports 887,203 (68,483)

2. WWOS ninemsn 729,709 (42,991)
3. smh.com.au/sport 669,448 (47,765)

4. Baggy Green 478,348 (46,005)

5. The Age Sport 413,084 (28,413)

6. Cricket.com.au 275,216 (16,984)

7. Sportal 132,203 (9,987)

Now just to clarify, the only pure cricket plays here are baggy green and cricket.com.au. It's interesting baggy green is still beating cricket.com.au given most of the in game cues are pushing to cricket.com.au. Foxsports includes not only their cricket coverage, but also all their other coverage AND stickcricket.com.au ... so it is hard to grasp which traffic is purely for cricket information. SMH and The Age are strong and one could hypothesise that most of their December traffic is Cricket related ... Sportal rounds things off at 132,203.

It's safe to say Baggy Green has benefited from being an early mover within this category - great figures for 07/08 season with definitely reduced TV pushes. (disclaimer: MI represents the interests of one Baggy Green advertising sponsor).

Another piece of data worth looking at is the % of overseas visitors on the main sites - considering the visiting Indian and Sri Lankan cricket teams

Foxsports - 22% of total traffic is intl

Cricket.com.au - 18% of total traffic is intl

Baggy Green - 4.5% of total traffic is intl

SMH/Sport - 36% of total traffic is intl

The Age/Sport - 33% of total traffic is intl

Fairfax properties have the highest % of intl visitors - however these properties IP target their display advertising to AU eyeballs only. Interestingly baggy green has a very low % of overseas visitors. One would hope the advertisers on Fox Sports and cricket.com.au are utilising IP targeting to make sure some of their ads aren't wasted on intl eyeballs.

A quick check of Google shows none of the above are presently (13/1/08) undertaking any SEM. The only properties using SEM are Yahoo!7, The Roar .com.au and Windows Live Search.

Entertainment: The new battleground for AU digital dollars?

The launch of ninemsn's The Fix website last year gained some column inches in the local media, including this story (http://business.smh.com.au/ninemsn-offers-celebrity-fix-in-push-to-boost-audience/20071128-1diu.html) from Julian Lee of the SMH which talked about these gossip sites ability to bring in ad revenue (generally across FMCG products which traditionally haven't migrated marketing dollars online despite the eyeballs shifting away from their more traditional media sources).

So anyway, I was checking out news.com.au the other day and noticed that they have also given their Entertainment properties a spruce up (further to their consolidation of their gossip sections into the Confidential section last year). Check - http://www.news.com.au/entertainment

The relaunch looks good - brings a lot of the content to the fore ... only downside is the page is way too long and perhaps is trying to cram too much in. Still - any site with an MREC and a Leaderboard above the fold is okay with me ;)

This relaunch made me think that the main publishers are taking entertainment pretty seriously for 2008.

Sites such as Perez Hilton and TMZ have definitely shifted the way we pry into the lives of movie stars, b list celebs, heiresses etc and the success of Perez Hilton in particular (91,000 AU users according to Neilsen Netview, December 2007) have shown that people now expect gossip to be reported in a different way.

They want it instantly, quickly and easily digestible. Most importantly it needs to be visual - video and slide shows. They also want the editorial to have an opinion - they don't just want AP feeds and Reuters reports. For evidence of this check TMZ and Perez, as well as the local version of the excellent Defamer - http://au.defamer.com/

Interestingly when you look at the top Entertainment sites across the major players (excluding Yahoo as they still don't allow third party site side measurement - ie Neilsen), it's the ones that are doing the above that are finding success.

The Fix - http://thefix.ninemsn.com.au/ - is flying with 699,000 UBs already in the first week of January. The average session is over 2 and a 1/2 minutes - the lead amongst the big players.

News Entertainment - http://www.news.com.au/entertainment has had just over 255,000 UBs so far in January. However they are doing only 53,000 on average per day (compared to 144,000 for The Fix)

Fairfax's flagship entertainment properties (http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment and http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment) are hitting 276,000 and 171,000 respectively. Brisbane Times is sluggish with just over 14,000 UBs so far (around 2,000 a day)

So why is The Fix working ... well lets go through the above again ...

- It is instantly and quickly and easily digestible.

- Most importantly it needs to be visual - video and slide shows.

- They also want the editorial to have an opinion - they don't just want AP feeds and Reuters reports.

On top of the gossip/news that draws people in, Fix has loads of depth across film, music, dining out etc ... which makes it sticky. They also have outrageously strong SEO for their review content across yourguides which would be delivering strong UB numbers. They also have the relatively unique luxury of three absolute beasts of traffic drivers - Hotmail, Messenger and the ninemsn homepage.

Personally, I think for Fairfax and News to catch up they need to look at doing the above - showing some opinion in editorial (which Fairfax does well with blogs and reviews) as well as strong visual content. Yes, gossip isn't really Fairfax's core strength, and I am sure they are happy with their numbers ... but News as a business is built on this sort of content ... so it will be interesting to see how they look to leverage their pedigree in this area online and adapt their content and editorial style to how people wish to digest their voyeuristic content nowadays.

Begs the question - will the right (read new/incremental) advertising dollars follow the eyeballs?