AOL’s new political news and blog site, PoliticsDaily.com has surpassed rival Politico.com in unique visits in May, after being launched only a month and a half ago. According to May’s comScore results, PoliticsDaily.com received 2.4 million unique visitors compared to 1.1 million unique visitors on Politico.com in May. PoliticsDaily, a “news magazine” site which primarily focuses on in-depth political commentary as opposed to breaking news, provides only original content, from long-form analysis to blog posts on issues in the U.S. political landscape. You can read our original review of PoliticsDaily here.
This is a big deal for AOL and representative of the company’s ambitions to become a dominant player in the online content space. PoliticsDaily is the brainchild of Martin Moe, senior vice president at AOL and is built under Bill Wilson’s new MediaGlow division, which is building new content brands distinct from AOL itself. MediaGlow, which recently launched topic directory Love.com, runs AOL News, Engadget and TMZ.com, among other properties.
AOL may be on to something. MediaGlow reports that sites as a whole, rose 5% year over year, with unique visitors climbing hitting 76.3 million, according to May’s comScore data. AOL’s Technology Network – which includes Engadget, , Switched, DownloadSquad, and others, saw the most growth out of all the MediaGlow networks, seeing 35 percent growth in year over year.
As TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington wrote earlier this month, the MediaGlow team is looking to pick up the remnants of the dying print magazine business and digitize this content. With the print business in shambles, a lot of high quality talent is suddenly willing to take a job in online, even at a much lower salary. And AOL has some cash from the dialup business.
High quality talent may be what is helping PoliticsDaily stay competitive in a crowded field. Wilson credits editor and former New York Times Washington Correspondent, Melinda Henneberger’s leadership and “dream team” as the primary reason for the site’s rapid growth. PoliticsDaily launched with a venerable list of experienced political reporters from both new and old media, including Walter Shapiro, former columnist for USA Today and former Washington bureau chief for Salon; Jill Lawrence, former national political correspondent for USA Today and columnist for the Associated Press; Carl Cannon, former Washington bureau chief for Reader’s Digest and White House correspondent for the National Journal and the Baltimore Sun; and others.
Of course there are still other political news-driven sites that are getting more unique visits than PoliticsDaily— The Huffington Post saw 5.3 million unique visits in May, over twice the amount of traffic than PoliticsDaily. But HuffPo’s a content aggregator and PoliticsDaily is focused more on long-form original content. And it seems that PoliticsDaily is still growing and may be a model for where magazines should head in the future.
In the grand scheme of things, AOL’s strategy towards monetizing niche content online seems to be working out. And since they’ve already got the publishing platform with MediaGlow, new brands can be inserted or built at little marginal operating cost. If the brand tanks, which is likely to happen at some point, then AOL isn’t losing too much. It will be interesting to see what digital content brands AOL unveil next. Wilson says that MediaGlow will be launching several sites in the near future, but declined to give specifics. Perhaps they’ll reinvent some of the dying magazine brands at former parent company Time Inc.?
How else are you going to miss it? Those of us who still use AOL will tell you the tantalizing headlines leave you with no choice than to click. Every click is usually met with disappointment. I would say Politico is a serious site, and PoliticsDaily lures people by picking controversial subjects bound to get peoples blood boiling and posting angry nonsensical responses. AOL rise has a lot to do with it going full blown tabloid. Many, many times, I have said to myself don’t click, you know it is crap, yet I click.
I still use AOL and its portal aol.com. I actually really like the new sites and new writers – PoliticsDaily being one and Spinner being another I go to – the TMZ headlines are over the top but they also make me click. so sometimes you do what is bad for you, but it’s fun.
If it was that easy to grow visitors, most blogs out there would already have been a hit.
The reason they have high unique visitors is because most users come directly from AOL.com and other blogs that are part of Media Glow division. If they start from scratch up, it will take about a year for them to get so popular.
I think Nakodari that is exactly what makes AOL’s approach so interesting. Very few have the scale of AOL (yahoo, google, msn, myspace, facebook) which provides them with a competitive advantage in building large audiences for their new targeted sites (like the new Politics Daily). To your point to get to the scale of Politics Daily on its own would take at least a year and they have accomplished that in less then a month. The Tech sites referenced in the post have been around for years yet they accelerated their growth substantially. I find AOL’s approach very interesting given their assets (dial-up cash, large portal audience allows new sites to scale) and the condition traditional print media finds itself in which allows online players to attract top talent. Who would have thought it. Not me.
UI on Politico is too choppy.
Nice green tinted photos on PoliticsDaily! I’m sure Ahmanadinnerjab will appreciate that.
Just checked it out — that green tint is too funny…some articles I would not have expected there too. As portals become less and less relevant it is wild to see AOL re-birth itself in this manner. That fact that AOL is growing again is surprising after the years (or is it a decade now?) of constant massive subscriber declines. That is some pretty heavy headwinds to overcome. I still use yahoo (don’t like it though) and find myself less and less on facebook. Staying up to date on Iran via twitter is eye-opening to the ever changing landscape.
It’s worth noting that 60% of PoliticsDaily’s referral traffic is from AOL. Meanwhile, Politico’s top referrers are the Drudge Report (18% share) and Digg (15%). Presumably, referrals also account for a smaller slice of Politico’s traffic than at PoliticsDaily.
So, considering the awful and relentless slide of AOL’s traffic, Politico seems to be in a much more comfortable position, even with half of PoliticsDaily’s visitors. That doesn’t even account for repeat traffic to each site, their demographics, or targeted ad sales — all of which favor Politico.
I think that is the Roger’s point above. Not many – if any – can drive traffic to a new site at such large numbers. To your point, portals are already declining and they are going to decline more over time. That is a given. Therefore that is what makes AOL’s strategy so interesting as they are doing something about it. Leverage the large audience while you have it (50+ Million people each month according to the compete link you provided) for new more interesting content offerings. Otherwise, what do you expect them to do, just ride the wave down as they already did with subscribers when broadband came 10 years ago.
Yeah, that makes sense. I’m interested in their strategy, too, just skeptical of its sustainability as AOL continues to decline. One-time readers aren’t readers at all.
check out compete’s graph on aol’s traffic. Their year to year for May 08 and May 09 is almost identical.
Well, I think most evidence, including the Quantcast chart I linked to above, show a significant decline in AOL’s traffic, but the point is that not all uniques are created equal. PoliticsDaily will only succeed if grows organic traffic. I’m sure they’re trying, and more power to them, but the 60% figure is reason to be skeptical.
Zach — of course in the first month traffic is going to be from the large AOL Audience…as AOL reaches over 100 Million people a month and almost 70% of the entire Internet audience…..that is the advantage they have….and therefore their addressable non-AOL audience is only 30% of the total web audience in the U.S……question I think you are asking and is more important for the future of AOL is if the site can thrive on its own like their other niche sites (Engadget, Urlesque, Spinner, FanHouse, Asylum, etc) a year or more later. Time will tell but I have to say regardless of outcome, the strategy is a smart one. They are taking advantage of the disruption in media. I will be keeping on it on them vs Yahoo and MSN and others. First time in a while I have started to pay attention to AOL….back to the future.
Politico basically lives off of drudge bait as well, they have just had longer to suck up with misleading stories.
Bah Humbug — everyone on the web sucks up (MySpace anyone). It is just a matter of who sucks the best. Seems AOL is starting to do their thing..did I just say that…based on my logic I think that may mean sucking the best….but wait, I can’t stop clicking either. Their new flickr photos on aol.com is way cool….almost as wild as love.com (but again, I still don’t think aol is behind that) as since techcrunch turned me on to that I check it a few times a day…..my browser keeps defaulting me to msn.com even though I keep changing it. I guess I have to Suck it up.
Since you are an asst. editor of Nieman Lab @ Harvard it is worth the effort to let you know that Compete’s tracking of AOL is completely inaccurate. The link you provide to demonstrate AOL’s traffic decline only shows domains that include aol in it and therefore all their content sites are not included — including PoliticsDaily and the others mentioned in this post (engadget, switched, downloadsquad) as well as most of their major sites FanHouse, WalletPop, StyleList, Spinner, Moviefone, etc. Therefore you should not use Compete to evaluate trends for aol as it is not accurate. ComScore which this post references demonstrates aol.com is up over 25% year over year.
Thanks, Insider. I’m generally skeptical of all the traffic-estimating firms, but they’re pretty good on relative measurements. And, sure, Comscore is counting all AOL properties, which is relevant. But I was looking at AOL.com, which includes subdomains like AOL News, because that’s where PoliticsDaily’s traffic is coming from. I think that’s an unsustainable position, but they’re young, and there’s time to change. That’s all.
Even at 2.4 million unique visitors, I doubt they are making much money off of this, if any. They are paying writers to create the content for this blog and the big name writers they have chosen don’t come cheap. Getting lots of traffic to a site is one thing…making enough money off of that traffic to cover your costs is another thing. Companies can brag about their traffic all they want, but if they are not making money off of it then they won’t have much to brag about for long.
Yes, Show Me The Money! Facebook, MySpace, AOL – big audiences — where is the money. AOL I think makes a Billion in profit a year though. Anyway, hardest step is building valuable audiences, then the money comes. or at least that is the current lesson in my MBA program. They got the hardest part done. Next up, the second hardest part, show me the money.
Facebook and Myspace are completely different than AOL. You idiot. Yahoo makes money. And I’m positive that microsoft’s online sites pull a profit on their own as well.
well it’s only a month and a half old.
Leena – thanks for turning me on to http://www.love.com/ have you checked out http://tech-crunch.love.com/ or maybe my roommates favorite addiction http://sasha-grey.love.com/
nice – very nice
looks great ..!
I like that Sasha Grey site you provided……I guess that is the point…photos go full screen too….I am in heaven looking at this now…just checked out Love.com’s Megan Fox site as a result….hot! Check out the 750 photos http://megan-fox.love.com/ and videos…..time suck
Hot. Real Hot. Her Films are Crazy too. Very cool way to keep up with the latest news. I went from Sasha to keeping up to date on developments in Iran…but then back to Sasha’s Girlfriend Experience news…..Sick like that.
All print magazines should go digital and global.
PLEASE understand that nobody visits a site like this on purpose. They see a headline that catches their eye on aol.com, like “Obama clashes with Republicans,” and the link takes them to this site. They would not identify themselves as political junkies. They won’t remember the name of this site. They won’t come back on purpose. They will return via the same method–something catching their eye on aol.com. Sure, a large audience can be generated in this way, but lets be clear: it’s not a true competitor to a site like politico in terms of reaching and engaging a mass audience interested in political news, and therefore it’s not attracting the kind of people a lot of advertisers in this space want to be reaching.
Here’s a tip for how to tell whether a site like this is attracting vertically-interested users, or just a place where a firehose like a portal homepage is sending lots of traffic: Look at the overlap in audience between this site and another in its category. There is almost zero overlap between politico and this site. If it were truly attracting self-identified political junkies, there would be a lot of overlap in audience.
Politicsdaily and Politico aren’t rivals, despite what the first sentence of this blog post says. The only thing they have in common is the word “politic” in their URL.
Politicsdaily looks like it’s trying to compete with Newsweek or Time or a newspaper or god knows what. Nobody seriously interested in politics is going to waste time reading Politicsdaily. Then again, nobody with a brain has anything to do with AOL.
I like the site. Just found myself reading a number of articles. Seems not to be liberal or conservative as I found items on both sides of the aisle. I found some writers i Know from the newspapers they used to write for. Still will go to Politico but I will add this one as well.
Considering Politicsdaily is on AOl’s homepage, of course they are going to get reasonable traffic. You could put a 404 page there and still get a million uniques if not more. You only have to look at Propeller.com. As you may recall Propeller was really the old Netscape, then the site made it on Aol’s home page…uniques spike to 5-7 million uniques (can’t remember exactly but was in that range) and then they were taken off the home page….opps…traffic was cut more more than half very quickly. Today, Propeller.com is at about 1mm uniques. This is exactly the same situation….so far.
Impressive. This is AOL? Surprised. What is Yahoo doing as it related to covering Politics?