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Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

blog.reddit.com

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Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#21

Post by gyardley »

Looks like Reddit's trying to sell brand advertising based off of their comScore numbers, since they're running comScore's direct-measurement JavaScript on their site and they didn't bother to mention comScore in this post.

The point of this blog post is probably to lump the Nielsen figures the agencies are using in with a bunch of services the agencies know are jokes (Alexa? get serious...) That way they can discredit Nielsen when they send this post to the agencies, along with their much-better comScore numbers.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#22

Post by gyardley »

goatforce5 wrote: post #20

Quantcast will tell everyone a lot more info if the reddit guys go here: http://www.quantcast.com/info/publisher-overview

Agencies don't take Quantcast as seriously as they take comScore, which is the unmentioned product that Reddit's actually using to track traffic.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#23

Post by hcho »

Psyonic wrote: post #16
hcho wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the margin of error is somewhat consistent, the numbers are still good for comparison between two sites.

It probably isn't, however. Alexa, for example, relies at least partly on the Alexa toolbar to get their figures. I'll venture a guess that most people with the Alexa toolbar installed aren't terribly web savvy, while reddit's audience, for example, are.

You are right, but they are still useful if comparing two sites targeting the same demographic. Reddit vs Techcrunch is OK, so is Facebook vs Twitter. Reddit vs Twitter probably not so much.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#24

Post by gyardley »

vaksel wrote: post #8
awa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the major part of the story is that compete.com, quantcast, alexa, nielson report a much smaller figure than numbers from google analytics

i think everyone already knows that...well at least in the site owner community...the shock is that they suck that much even for a top 300 site

The degree of suck has nothing to do with the size of the site and everything to do with the propensity of the site's audience to participate in market research programs for a pittance.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#25

Post by petercooper »

pavs wrote: post #6
alextingle wrote: post #4

I suspect that the vast majority of Redditors use Ad-block or equivalent. Reddit might get millions of page views, but if that doesn;t translate into ad-impressions then they are effectively invisible to the money-people.

This logic would also apply to other tech blog and generally tech sites with tech-savvy users. Most of them, including Wired, Ars, Digg, slashdot are doing just fine. Digg has their own marketing/advertising team, unlike reddit. I think this makes the difference.

And not all forms of ads are blocked out by AdBlock type plugins/addons by default either, just the most onerous ones and those people can be bothered to manually add.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#26

Post by samd »

gyardley wrote: post #21

Looks like Reddit's trying to sell brand advertising based off of their comScore numbers, since they're running comScore's direct-measurement JavaScript on their site and they didn't bother to mention comScore in this post. The point of this blog post is probably to lump the Nielsen figures the agencies are using in with a bunch of services the agencies know are jokes (Alexa? get serious...) That way they can discred…

In the comments they said that they started working with comScore about 5 months ago and are still waiting for a report, apparently comScore mangled their first 3 months of data.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#27

Post by nirav » 

  prefer to rate sites by their "percentage of total Internet traffic"
I can't help but wonder how ridiculous business model like Alexa's works in reality, their source of data is not even scientifically relevant to measure total internet traffic, and yet they manage to get attention from everyone?

I almost feel that I would be laughed at if I had this start up idea and went to raise funding.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#28

Post by sh1mmer »

jorgeortiz85 wrote: post #19

I thought the whole point of Quantcast is that they can directly measure traffic instead of trying to guess. They don't even charge for it: http://www.quantcast.com/info/publisher-overview

Which is fine, but if you have to do that for all the traffic analysis firms you add lots of JavaScript beacons to your page, slowing it down a lot.

They need to start working with companies like Google to use Analytics as a clearing house.

Then you get issues with what and how people are instrumenting. For example, if you instrument a carrousel you'll get a lot of page "loads" which don't necessarily correspond to page loads or ad impressions.

Re: Reddit reveals their traffic numbers, compares to Alexa/Compete etc

#29

Post by earl »

If you quantify, your raw pv numbers are free to you and to everyone else. I believe, but am not sure, that the privacy controls are granular enough to allow you to display eg visitors but not pageviews to the world at large.

visit, eg, http://quantcast.com/gawker.com . Click the dropdown under "Daily Traffic" and select people.

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