MSNBC.com, CNN.com battle over video
Cory Bergman February 13th, 2007
I hesitate to post stories that compare online traffic between sites (other than Nielsen/Netratings stats) because it’s nearly always apples-to-oranges. So keep that in mind as you look at these stats, both from internal traffic logs. CNN.com says it served up a little over 600 million video streams in 2006, and MSNBC.com put its number at 712 million. Needless to say, video is a priority for these top news sites, both in reality and perception, as they battle it out for audiences and advertisers (and in CNN’s case, Pipeline subscriptions, too).
7 Comments Add your own
1. J$ | February 13th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
They’re battling over a drop in the bucket- YouTube serves over 100 millions videos a day.
2. thomas | February 13th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
100 Million YT streams = 1 Million content worthy streams else where. So if my MN math is correct that would put both CNN and MSNBC in front by nearly double. Don’t get me wrong, 100 Million daily is quite the accomplishment but have you seen the crap on YT?
3. ak | February 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
msnbc has a better portal strategy so they get their videos viewed by a lot of people who aren’t off hunting for hard news. Also, have you noticed there is practically nothing above the fold on cnn.com that you can click on that won’t spawn a video?
4. thedetroitchannel | February 13th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
“content worthy” is in the eyes of the beholder.
much of what plagues sites today is the authoritarian nature of its hosts.
5. Irv Weinstein | February 13th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
MSNBC.com has its “portal strategy” by default. It’s also the site’s weakness: close to half its audience comes through the MSN gateway and most neither know nor care about the site they are visiting. So in that sense, much of MSNBC.com’s traffic, video or otherwise, is not of equivalent value to CNN’s audience.
6. thomas | February 13th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
well if “content worthy” is in the eyes of the beholder than most of YT’s audience must be blind. — joking, well, not really.
7. Cory | February 13th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Remember, don’t think of YT from a broadcasting perspective. You watch what’s relevant to you — the long tail — and most of the views come from people sharing their clips with people of like affinity groups or friends and families. More than half of YT’s video views come from its clips embedded elsewhere — or via email links — instead of people who visit YT firsthand.
A stupid video of a couple guys in Mexico isn’t stupid if they’re my friends.
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