comScore Media Metrix has released its “Behaviors of the Blogosphere” marketing study sponsored by SixApart and Gawker Media, two of the largest players with skin in this particular game. Surveying more than 1.5 million US internet users at 400 individual domains, comScore found:
- 50 million US internet users—fully 30% of all US internet users—visited weblogs in Q1 2005
- Five hosting services had more than 5 million unique visitors in Q1 2005; four individual publications each had more than 1 million visitors
- Political blogs were the most popular (43% visitor share), followed by “hipster” lifestyle blogs (17%), tech blogs (15%), female-author blogs (8%), media blogs (8%), personal blogs (6%), and business blogs(3%)
- Weblog readers live in wealthier households than average internet users, visit almost twice as many web pages, are much more likely to shop online, and are more likely to have broadband connections
The survey indicates that some of the publications with the most unique users do not have loyal audiences. freerepublic.com, for example, had more than 3.6 million unique visitors in Q1 2005, but those users visited an average of only 1.6 times during the quarter. Some publications have smaller, but more loyal audiences. boingboing.net, for example, had 849,000 unique visitors during the quarter but they visited more than 1.2 million times.
Weblog readers are disproportionately likely to be affluent (11% more likely than average internet users to have incomes of US$75,000 or more) and young (30% more likely than average internet users to live in households where the head of household is 18 - 34). A whopping 41% of blog readers had annual household incomes of US$75,000 or more.
Gawker Media publisher and survey sponsor, Nick Denton, provides his own analysis of the comScore survey, saying it bears out his company’s contention that their readers are young, rich, and influential. Denton expects to see advertisers shift more of their online budgets to weblogs, writing, “the vast majority of advertisers have been waiting for data. Here it is.”
Meanwhile, Jason Calacanis points out some interesting concerns about comScore’s methodology. The comScore report linked above is a draft. Here’s hoping the full report will be released publicly, and soon.
UPDATE: Tuesday, 09 August 2005 07:05PM CDT After reading the latest from Jason Calacanis, I’m convinced the comScore survey methodology is either severely flawed or incomplete. Calacanis is right, comScore should release its raw survey data immediately.
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