Digital Quarters – Ben Elowitz
Wetpaint CEO Ben Elowitz on the Future of Digital Media
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About Ben Elowitz
About Ben Elowitz Ben Elowitz is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a technology platform company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. The company attracts more than 15 million unique visitors monthly on its platform. In addition to Digital Quarters, he writes Media Success, a bold and forthright newsletter for digital media thought leaders. His work has been featured in FORTUNE, TechCrunch, All Things D, The Huffington Post, Forbes, TIME, CNNMoney, paidContent, and CNBC.com, among others. Prior to Wetpaint, Ben co-founded Blue Nile (NILE), the largest online retailer of luxury goods. Ben was also an early employee at Fatbrain.com (FATB), an ecommerce company that went public in 1998 and was sold to Barnes & Noble in 1999. Ben holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an angel investor in a number of media and ecommerce companies, and is a frequent conference speaker on digital media, social content, and entrepreneurship.
Archive for September, 2012
Now Double Your Audience
21 Sep2012
by Ben Elowitz
Want more traffic? In a business where more reach and engagement means more advertising revenues, every publisher wants more traffic. So, what if you could double your traffic with no additional investment in content?
For a while, I’ve been writing about how digital media requires as much emphasis on distribution and audience development as on content; and how social networks offer the greatest opportunity to build audience. But we just hit a new milestone that finally crosses into new territory: proving that mastering social distribution can double your traffic. And a model with twice as much engagement can be twice as valuable.
The milestone for us happened last month, less than 24 months since we launched our Wetpaint Entertainment property:
When you consider that the leading web publishers are getting less than 6% of their traffic from social on average, that’s some serious untapped audience potential.
July Social Leaderboard: Remarkably Flat
20 Sep2012
by Ben Elowitz
Results took a little while longer to compile for July: social traffic to the Top 50 publishers on the web remains remarkably flat, with the average publisher adding only 0.2 percentage points to their social traffic composition.
What’s up with the slump? Sure, we could all be a running a little faster, but there are signs that Facebook’s internal priorities are putting a damper on publisher progress. Search and advertising initiatives have been getting a lot of attention in light of the post-IPO hangover, and platform initiatives seem to be taking a back seat.
For the Win: Wetpaint, People, NFL!
Despite a lackluster performance overall, we did have a few sprinters on the Social Leaderboard. CBS jumped 6 spots and added 3 percentage points to its social traffic composition to become the 4th most social publisher on the list. People held a steady pace and was able to reclaim the #2 spot on the Social Leaderboard when NFL and MTV both stumbled and fell into 3rd and 5th place, respectively.
Wetpaint Entertainment held the top spot with a 5.7 percentage point gain that put us at 35% social.
Average Social Volume Gain: 110,000 Social Visitors
We’ve been measuring social performance on two metrics: 1) Social Composition (percent of traffic coming from social) and 2) Social Volume(total number of visits from social). On the second metric, the average publisher was up just slightly this month (by 110K social visits). The Huffington Post is still the publisher to beat on this list, and the publishers who topped the list this time are the same publishers we saw in last month’s Top Ten.
Details for Social Leaderboard Publishers:
|
MONTHLY RANKINGS |
|
||||||
|
Jul |
Jun |
May |
Name of Publisher (Owner) | URL |
Monthly Uniques |
% from Social |
Change |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
Wetpaint Entertainment | WETPAINT.COM |
3,756,818 |
35.0% |
5.7% |
|
2 |
4 |
2 |
People | PEOPLE.COM |
12,512,843 |
10.3% |
-0.1% |
|
3 |
2 |
5 |
National Football League | NFL.COM |
5,054,004 |
10.3% |
-1.6% |
|
4 |
10 |
6 |
CBS | CBS.COM |
5,255,065 |
9.1% |
2.9% |
|
5 |
3 |
3 |
MTV | MTV.COM |
9,743,751 |
9.1% |
-1.7% |
|
6 |
5 |
7 |
TMZ | TMZ.COM |
13,350,933 |
8.5% |
-0.2% |
|
7 |
6 |
4 |
NBC Universal | NBC.COM |
6,545,231 |
7.3% |
-1.2% |
|
8 |
7 |
8 |
Yahoo! | YAHOO.COM |
148,433,777 |
7.2% |
-0.1% |
|
9 |
12 |
28 |
E! Entertainment Television | EONLINE.COM |
7,850,359 |
7.2% |
1.3% |
|
10 |
8 |
10 |
Major League Baseball | MLB.COM |
14,203,530 |
6.9% |
0.0% |
|
11 |
9 |
9 |
Patch (Aol) | PATCH.COM |
11,476,566 |
6.5% |
-0.1% |
|
12 |
11 |
11 |
Aol | AOL.COM |
46,783,960 |
6.2% |
0.0% |
|
13 |
13 |
15 |
Entertainment Weekly | EW.COM |
6,392,260 |
5.9% |
0.4% |
|
14 |
14 |
14 |
TV Guide | TVGUIDE.COM |
6,160,054 |
5.3% |
-0.1% |
|
15 |
15 |
16 |
IGN (News Corp) | IGN.COM |
8,773,566 |
5.2% |
-0.1% |
|
16 |
18 |
20 |
FOX News (News Corp) | FOXNEWS.COM |
26,898,357 |
5.1% |
0.3% |
|
17 |
21 |
13 |
Discovery Channel | DISCOVERY.COM |
9,416,222 |
5.0% |
0.5% |
|
18 |
16 |
19 |
CNN | CNN.COM |
43,781,596 |
4.9% |
0.0% |
|
19 |
17 |
18 |
MSN | MSN.COM |
92,238,832 |
4.9% |
0.0% |
|
20 |
34 |
30 |
FORBES | FORBES.COM |
11,280,333 |
4.8% |
1.5% |
|
21 |
20 |
23 |
BBC News | BBC.CO.UK |
13,046,671 |
4.7% |
0.2% |
|
22 |
26 |
24 |
National Geographic Society | NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM |
4,940,584 |
4.5% |
0.8% |
|
23 |
19 |
17 |
US Weekly | USMAGAZINE.COM |
7,563,554 |
4.4% |
-0.3% |
|
24 |
23 |
22 |
The Huffington Post (Aol) | HUFFINGTONPOST.COM |
38,522,868 |
4.2% |
0.1% |
|
25 |
29 |
26 |
New York Times | NYTIMES.COM |
25,357,128 |
4.1% |
0.5% |
|
26 |
22 |
21 |
TIME | TIME.COM |
7,710,128 |
4.0% |
-0.2% |
|
27 |
24 |
12 |
Break Media | BREAK.COM |
9,043,234 |
3.8% |
-0.1% |
|
28 |
32 |
32 |
Bleacher Report | BLEACHERREPORT.COM |
10,580,640 |
3.7% |
0.3% |
|
29 |
28 |
25 |
The Washington Post | WASHINGTONPOST.COM |
16,076,403 |
3.7% |
0.0% |
|
30 |
33 |
27 |
CBS News | CBSNEWS.COM |
11,952,616 |
3.6% |
0.2% |
|
31 |
27 |
35 |
The Guardian | GUARDIAN.CO.UK |
9,178,171 |
3.5% |
-0.2% |
|
32 |
31 |
31 |
IMDB (Amazon.com) | IMDB.COM |
34,636,527 |
3.5% |
0.0% |
|
33 |
30 |
33 |
Nickelodeon (MTV Networks) | NICK.COM |
10,319,657 |
3.4% |
-0.2% |
|
34 |
35 |
38 |
Los Angeles Times (Tribune) | LATIMES.COM |
15,454,530 |
3.4% |
0.2% |
|
35 |
25 |
29 |
New York Daily News | NYDAILYNEWS.COM |
11,964,397 |
3.1% |
-0.6% |
|
36 |
37 |
34 |
Food Network (Scripps) | FOODNETWORK.COM |
14,706,293 |
3.0% |
0.3% |
|
37 |
36 |
36 |
Cartoon Network (Turner) | CARTOONNETWORK.COM |
9,284,076 |
2.7% |
-0.3% |
|
38 |
38 |
37 |
Wall Street Journal (News Corp) | WSJ.COM |
12,631,777 |
2.6% |
0.1% |
|
39 |
40 |
40 |
Reuters | REUTERS.COM |
10,594,538 |
2.3% |
0.3% |
|
40 |
41 |
39 |
USA Today (Gannet) | USATODAY.COM |
18,774,614 |
2.1% |
0.1% |
|
41 |
39 |
41 |
FOX Sports (News Corp) | FOXSPORTS.COM |
21,971,854 |
2.1% |
0.0% |
|
42 |
43 |
43 |
CNET (CBS Interactive) | CNET.COM |
22,876,301 |
1.8% |
0.0% |
|
43 |
42 |
42 |
WebMD | WEBMD.COM |
14,282,989 |
1.8% |
0.0% |
|
44 |
44 |
44 |
Bloomberg | BLOOMBERG.COM |
6,344,855 |
1.7% |
0.0% |
|
45 |
46 |
45 |
Businessweek (Bloomberg) | BUSINESSWEEK.COM |
6,539,164 |
1.7% |
0.1% |
|
46 |
45 |
46 |
everyday Health | EVERYDAYHEALTH.COM |
9,717,095 |
1.5% |
-0.1% |
|
47 |
47 |
48 |
LIVESTRONG (Demand Media) | LIVESTRONG.COM |
15,249,509 |
1.1% |
-0.1% |
|
48 |
48 |
49 |
About.com (NY Times) | ABOUT.COM |
50,908,931 |
1.1% |
0.0% |
|
49 |
49 |
47 |
ThePostGame (Yahoo) | THEPOSTGAME.COM |
6,096,594 |
1.1% |
-0.1% |
|
50 |
50 |
50 |
Mayo Clinic | MAYOCLINIC.COM |
9,860,926 |
0.8% |
-0.1% |
|
51 |
51 |
51 |
eHow (Demand Media) | EHOW.COM |
51,587,708 |
0.8% |
0.0% |