Categories: OLD Media Moves

Assessing business news site traffic

Lewis Dvorkin, the chief product officer at Forbes, writes about web traffic for news sites, including business news sites.

Dvorkin writes, “Check out The Wall Street Journal. Paywall and all, traffic is finally growing after hanging in the low 20 million unique visitor range for the first three quarters of 2015. It shot to 26.7 million in October and then 33.1 million in December, although its exclusive mobile traffic remains below the magic 50% mark. That says something about its demographic.

“BusinessInsider, on a traffic tear for years, peaked at 45.3 million in July and then began a decent (to a low of 37.6 million in November) shortly before its purchase by Germany’s Axel Springer in late September. It’s definitely tapping the millennial crowd, with 25.4 million exclusive mobile visitors by year’s end, though the question to ask is at what CPMs?

“And how’s The Mayor doing? Near the start of the year, Bloomberg.com launched a redesign that folded in Businessweek.com, too. In October 2014, the two separate sites combined for 25.4 million unique visitors. In December 2015, the one big Bloomberg.com site attracted slightly less than that, or 25.1 million visitors. And rather anemic mobile-only usage (only 8 million) is hardly growing at all. Perhaps that’s why The Mayor, a terminal junkie, suggested in a staff meeting that maybe he didn’t need a web site after all.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

Recent Posts

Dynamo hires former Business Insider executive editor Harrington

Former Business Insider executive editor Rebecca Harrington has been hired by Dynamo to be its…

18 hours ago

Bloomberg TV hires Kerubo as desk producer

Bloomberg Television has hired Brenda Kerubo as a desk producer in London. She will be covering Europe's…

18 hours ago

Jittery CNBC staff reassured by new boss

In a meeting at CNBC headquarters Thursday afternoon, incoming boss Mark Lazarus presented a bullish…

18 hours ago

Making business news accessible to a wider audience

Ritika Gupta, the BBC's North American business correspondent, was interviewed by Global Woman magazine about…

18 hours ago

Rest of World hires Lo as China reporter

Rest of World has hired Kinling Lo as a China reporter. Lo was previously a…

19 hours ago

Bloomberg rises to No. 7 biz news website

Bloomberg News saw strong unique visitor growth to its website in October, passing Fox Business…

19 hours ago