Digg, Fark bring traffic - but is it good?
Don Day July 8th, 2007
At KTVB, we recently ran the story of a man who was sitting on a small medical plane when the window next to him blew out at 20,000 feet, and he found himself half in and half out of the plane (he survived). We posted the story and the man’s uncut interview, and immediately saw strong traffic from our local market. It quickly made the homepage of Fark. Sister-site KING5.com ran the story as well, and their version hit the homepage of Digg. Between the two sites, the story has been viewed more than 120,000 times. EBaumsWorld.com picked up the story from Fark - and we’ve now seen more views from this “second wave” than the original links.
There’s a downside. I love that the viral attention drives up unique user and pageview counts - but its a little bit like a quick high. The folks surfing in from Digg aren’t likely interested in local advertisers - and actually drag down our pageview to unique user count - since they are usually only good for one or two pageviews per month. What do you think? Is viral traffic good for building business?
16 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | July 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
That’s why you need a remnant advertising provider with national campaigns and an ad server that does basic geolocation. When you start to get a crush of non-local visitors then you don’t waste your local ads on them.
2. Joe Gannon | July 8th, 2007 at 11:25 am
On the one hand, yes, you’re right, all that Fark-Drudge-eBaum traffic is exciting to have. It’s cool to see your page views shoot up fast, and it sure gets your GM and ND excited. Then comes the next day and it’s all gone. It’s kinda like when you do a contest on your air - it’s the same problem - folks that are watching you just to win a prize and leave you as soon as the contest is over. This kind of web traffic is very similar, plus it doesn’t help you locally.
On the other hand, why look a gift horse in the mouth? This kind of traffic gives you a national exposure you would never get on your narrow broadcast channel. You’ve got people sampling your product that never would have otherwise. It seems to me that there needs to be a strategy for making the most out of this kind of traffic, from both an advertising standpoint and a content standpoint.
Have national ads served to anybody coming from one of those sites. Make sure these story pages have links to more salacious related content, from your site and from sister sites in your ownership group.
3. TheDetroitChannel | July 8th, 2007 at 11:35 am
doesn’t say much for our year-long argument, does it, don?
like ‘anonymous’ #1 says, you need to quit thinking about traffic in local terms. AND MONETIZE IT.
another recent case where this happened was when the poor young girl lost both her feet to an amusement ride (see thelouisvillechannel stats).
something tells me ‘thenewguy(s)’ there see an opportunity. we’ll see.
and the beat goes on.
4. Anonymous | July 8th, 2007 at 11:39 am
#1 comments by “anonymous” says it all. Same goes for streaming video, but maybe even more so, as bandwidth for an “out of the blue” 5MM stream viral video may break the bank (if you don’t have a remnant pre/mid stream deal in place)… Using basic geo ad serving (which is all most ad servers can accurately handle), is a great recommendation, as well. Love Joe’s thoughts on turning the “drive by” traffic into additional traffic by peppering the article with other links in the viral page too…
5. TheDetroitChannel | July 8th, 2007 at 11:51 am
“which is what most ad servers can accurately handle”
that is changing rapidly.
i would say the ultimate goal is to present LOCAL ads based on the locality of the USER. they are the boss, right?
we might be a few years away before this is perfected and the norm, but it’s what a few have been saying all along.
to think that the typical user only visits their own local tv/radio/newspaper’s web channel is selling yourself short.
the million dollar yet-to-be-answered question is WHO will make it so obvious where to go besides google.
6. Swift Loris | July 8th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
FWIW, I went to the site to view the video, but twice it cut out about halfway through. I’d like to see the last part, but I don’t want to sit through the first part again after having watched it twice! Never had that happen with a video before.
7. Treehouse | July 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
If Fark finds the story worthwhile, then the station website is doing something right.
8. Rob | July 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Too often we - TV people - think in terms of market being determined by how far our transmitters and translators reach.
Your market online is larger than what the ‘TV market’ and using DIgg, Fark, YouTube, MySpace, Newsvine, whatever to get your message out about your product and it brings you more people to your site, then you’re golden if you’ve got a way to make money off of it.
Maybe most people came to see the guy on the plane story and left. But perhaps a few stayed. Maybe they saw some things on your site they liked. Next big story you’ll see it again … huge influx of people but probably some will stay again which leads to incremental growth in community members
9. Steve Boriss | July 8th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
See “Online news sites and bloggers will eventually need to specialize by advertisers’ sales prospects to monetize”, in which I refered and crosslinked to this page at TheFutureOfNews.com (Steve Boriss, TheFutureOfNews.com)
10. Mnewman | July 9th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Is it really a bad thing if a lot of people view our stories? Even if they aren’t necessarily interested in our ads someone will be (the people who the ad is targeted to). Inside of the large audience that is coming from Fark and Digg, there are most likely people who you want reading your page on a daily basis, and they might come back. Any exposure, even short term, is going to boost your numbers long term, just not at the rate of that one day.
11. The Tony | July 9th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I don’t care if Digg or Fark or local advertisers are rich or well-pageviewed or whatever.
I’m a user.
I want the content they provide, to hell with the provider.
I’m certainly not there to look at banner ads or watch pre-roll commercials or anything like that.
“Oh, a story I think is interesting. I’ll check that out.”
(TIME PASSES)
“Okay, done. What else is entertaining on the Internets for me?”
It’s a selfish thing, web use. I’m in it for my own enjoyment, not to make sure some site is profitable or whatever.
12. Aaron | July 9th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Taking #1 and #5 a step further, most station groups ARE selling local ads in a dozen or more markets — they just haven’t invested in the technology to show those local ads on more than one site.
If KTVB suddenly gets Farked, why shouldn’t visitors from Dallas see local ads from WFAA or DMN?
13. Jeremiah | July 11th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I’m consulting with a CBS affiliate here in N. CA regarding a similar issue.
My suggestion (which I’m sure they’ll discard) was to create a “Blue Moon” policy (as in, “once in a blue moon”) for high-interest, viral stories they may happen across.
The policy is really simple: “Blue Moon” stories get a different template on the website, featuring ads of more regional or national interest (hint: this is where you want to advertise your local tourist destinations, travel adverts, etc.). These stories get loaded to a different (load balanced) server to handle the crush of the social swarms.
14. Evangelos | July 28th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Nice…
15. Stelios | August 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 am
Sorry
16. Makis | September 18th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
interesting
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