Project Runway Overtakes PerezHilton.com for Season Premier

In preparation for Lifetime's season premier of Project Runway, PerezHilton.com ran its standard background ad unit alongside integrated, rich IAB units. The unique part of this campaign, however, was how Perez removed the blog's standard right column so as to better promote Lifetime and the TV schedule. Normally, the right column houses a collection of navigational units and advertising banners. In addition to simplifying the page's visuals - it ensures that the only advertiser on the page is Project Runway... which Perez then sells at premium:

Michael Jackson Drives Perez Hilton to Record 2m Uniques in Day

Michael Jackson's death was remarkable in several ways - one of which was what it signified for news delivery and discovery. Like millions of others, I first found out through Facebook, Twitter, text messages... all of which led me to TMZ and Perez Hilton. The first major news source to break Jackson's death was the LA Times - and it is important to note that it was done first through their blog and not the homepage. Of course, that was discovered and then shared instantly via Twitter.

Hitwise today notes that TMZ experienced record traffic - catapulting into the 60th most trafficked website (and struggling to support the overwhelming growth).

But you can also look at Perez Hilton to give perspective on the traffic growth. PerezHilton.com is measured by Quantacst and we can therefore get a public, accurate representation of his traffic. Two million uniques visited PerezHilton.com on June 26th - a huge leap from the previous high of 1.6m. Those 2m visitors delivered 15.3m total page views for the day - which was his third biggest total but short of the April 22nd record of 17.7m.

To put this in perspective, we can compare it to Huffington Post's traffic for June 26th (also measured by Quantcast). Measured by uniques, HuffingtonPost is a far larger site: 19.5m monthly uniques vs. 13.1m. By pagviews, PerezHilton is far larger: ~300m monthly views vs. ~220m. But Perez dominated by any measurement and, regardless of the 'winner', these are huge numbers for nontraditional media sources and proof that 'breaking' news is being delivered - and read! - in nontraditional places.

PerezHilton.com: 15.3m pageviews and 2m uniques HuffingtonPost.com: 9m pageviews and 1.7m uniques

Facebook Drives 19% of Huffington Post's Traffic

When I last covered Perez Hilton, it was when he hit 14,000,000 pageviews in a single day - a remarkable feat considering big brands like Huffington Post had topped out at 7,700,000. An interesting outcome of the article came from Hitwise: Heather Hopkins noted that Facebook was Perez Hilton's #1 traffic referral (8.7% vs Google's 7.6%).

So I dug into Huffington Post's numbers to see what another major media site's traffic sources looked like. First off, HuffPo does about 200 million monthly pageviews and reaches about 13 million viewers:

Also worth noting: Huffington Post is nearly two years old. That may seem trivial, but it means that they have had plenty of time to build a good reputation with Google (and other search engines) and links across the web (blogs, media, etc)... and with two years of content, that suggests that SEO traffic should be higher for Huffington Post than the normal publisher.

Yet, according to Compete's "referring analytics", Huffington Post derives 18.6% of its traffic from Facebook. Wow:

HuffingtonPost.com "referring analytics": #1. Facebook 18.59% #2. Google 11.6% #3. Yahoo 5.16% #4. Digg 4.43% #5. NYTimes 2.5%

Huffington Post gets nearly 1/3rd of their traffic from two sources: one is algorithmic and one is social. And the fact that so much of their traffic comes from Facebook suggests that Huffington Post:

- creates great, viral content... interesting enough that its readers actively share it - benefits from breaking news (probably before major papers can) and/or controversial content

Perez Hilton Hits 14,000,000 Pageviews Yesterday. Wow.

You might not be interested in celebrity news and gossip...You might not consider it important or meaningful... But to the web, it is significant and marks a major move in the Digital Media space.

I've written about Perez Hilton many times before and the values / perils of being a one-man brand.

But by doing 14,000,000 pageviews yesterday... Perez has clearly showed those are not issues for PerezHilton.com and his business. 14m pageviews is a staggering number for what is basically a one-man shop and blog. Those numbers cement him as a major online brand and space (obvious even a year ago). Consider that 14m pageviews is ahead of Huffington Post (max was 7.7m / day in last month) and on the heels of Wordpress.com (max was 20.8m in last month).

It is also worth noting that all three sites (PerezHilton.com, Wordpress.com and HuffingtonPost.com) are directly measured by Quantcast.

Perez Hilton's daily traffic measured against Huffington Post (to show scale):

Perez Hilton's daily traffic measured against Wordpress.com's:

Perez Hilton's Monthly Uniques

Perez Hilton's Monthly Pageviews:

Perez Hilton Asks for Facebook "Boycott" Amidst Content Ownership Controversy

The buzz on a slow Monday of tech news is around Facebook and who owns the content uploaded / created by their users.

But lost in this is that Perez Hilton covered it early this afternoon... before TechCrunch and linking to Mashable.

Three things strike me about this:

1. Techmeme isn't picking up on Perez Hilton... who may not be a technology blogger - but is more influential than any of the blogs listed in this Techmeme 'discussion'. And perhaps more influential / powerful than all of them combined.

2. Perez's influence - whether it is well informed or not - may well be the kind of pop-coverage that has driven a flurry of bad user feedback. When Perez tells users to "Boycott Facebook" - that is scary and certainly worthy of a well constructed response. Now whether Mark Zuckerberg's letter was a response directly to this (of course not), it is clearly noticed.

3. This really isn't shocking or news... the "complication" of who owns the data is complicated for all major sites and platforms. This was bound to become an issue as Facebook grew in popularity and functionality... and it will pass as well. Users may be upset on the surface - but it will not change their reliance on Facebook or their social network (unless something egregious happens).

Star Trek Takes Over ESPN.com... Four Months too Early

On Super Bowl weekend, ESPN was able to sell its homepage with two massive rich-media Star Trek advertisements... you know, the new iMax move that comes out May 8th, 2009. On a weekend when ESPN likely expects greater-than-normal traffic... and when television ad-spots are notoriously expensive... and in an economy where those Super Bowl ads *still* are not sold out... this campaign is both impressive for the publisher and questionable for the advertiser.

Even for Hollywood - advertising four months out on the web seems strange. Usually Hollywood advertises online to reinforce campaigns already airing on television, in theaters, and so forth. And usually the campaigns are more targeted and within a couple weeks from the movie's release. For instance, the week leading up to Bride War's release, PerezHilton.com was covered in full-page units.

That makes total sense. This, however, is completely bizarre.

Widgetbox Introduces the Blidget Pro

Widgetbox has released the Blidget Pro product: the next generation of our successful Blidget tool. Also worth noting, it is our first subscription-based service ($3.99 / mo or $29.99 / year). The Blidget Pro is a far more powerful version of the Blidget - a tool that has converted nearly 100,000 blogs into widgets and served 2.3 billion impressions since its initial launch in 2007. It represents a major step forward – and the best way to give you a feel for its capabilities is with some samples (the full feature set is below). Please contact me if you are interested in learning more or how Widgetbox can help you and your company:

- Easily create viral, branded widgets without any code - Custom header, footer and/or body assets (jpg, gif, swf, png) - Tab integration for multiple feeds and formats - In-widget video integration for YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo (Hulu example) - New visual layouts (slideshow, brick-mode, headlines with images) - Custom widget linking (header, footer and/or body) - Premium promotion on Widgetbox.com -Widget analytics (installs, widget views, uniques)

2009 Predictions: More Huffington Posts and Daily Beasts

First there was the Drudge Report.Now there is the Huffington Post. ... And Politico. ... And The Daily Beast.

And as part of my 20 Digital Media Predictions for 2009 series, I am suggesting that there will be others that successfully break into this space.

Why? Because five themes are at work here:

1. For the most part, the major news sources aren't yet hip to online traffic and marketing... that leaves a major opportunity for upstart, web savvy online content players who aggregate and create news.

2. It is (relatively) easy to drive traffic in these formats... and it is scalable. With the right team, it is possible to achieve large numbers quickly.

3. Consumers like their content aggregated and they like it delivered in blog-like formats (real-time, easily digestible, full of links).

4. Launching is affordable as it requires little up-front costs (development, dollars, etc). Meanwhile, data is easily accessible such that the business model and audience appetite can be assessed before warranting a full investment / resourcing.

5. Verticals fetch advertising dollars. And this trend will become more apparent in 2009.

A New Wave of Skinned & Tethered Rich Media Ad Units

While at SpaceCamp over the last couple days (in gorgeous Santa Monica), there was a lot of discussion around engaging advertising formats and units. Most of the conversation was around advertising on social media and UGC - which clearly adds a variety of additional complexities. When it comes to advertising formats, two verticals tend to be most aggressively leading the charge: video games and celebrity 'news'. I spend a lot of time actively looking for online ads and understanding what network is trafficking them.... but most consumers have trained themselves to visually block out traditional units (728x60, 160x600, etc). I know from my experience, for instance, that the 728x60 atop this blog doesn't perform anywhere close to the square unit within each post.

Go to IGN.com and PageSix (from the NY Post) to see aggressive, cutting edge advertising (and they've been doing this for a while). They are doing two interesting things:

1. Selling 'tethered' units to the same advertiser. So an advertiser gets two traditional units that site beside one another. The benefit of this is that the units can speak to one another and represent a significant portion of the page - consequently, they get a greater rate than each unit would sell for separately. Typically these units are rich media.

2. Selling 'skins' where the page template is themed and effectively becomes a major advertising unit. Perez Hilton was actually one of the early adopters of this format.

This clearly only works when you either sell your real estate directly or through an agency - but the result is advertising that

- clearly cannot be overlooked - delivers greater value for the advertiser and consequently greater eCPMs for the publisher - and because the units are so rich and stimulating, a relevant and engaging user experience for the reader

Would you rather see these sorts of ads or, frankly, the types of units that appear on this page? The reason this works best (for now) in Video Games and Gossip is that those two audiences are visually stimulated and more welcoming of aggressive promotion. I suspect this will expand quickly - look for sports, video and technology to follow.

IGN - an example of 'tethered' Best Buy flash units:

Page Six skinning their page to promote the new Pamela Advertising show

Page Six's 'tethered' unit for the new VH1 P Diddy show