Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Behind the Numbers: NYT versus HuffPo

The New York Times generates about $15 million a month in advertising from its online site with 16 million monthly uniques, which translates into about $1 per unique visitor a month, according to Joe Pompeo at Business Insider.

Here's BI on HuffPo's earnings:
HuffPo made revenues of $12-15 million last year, a consensus estimate. Let’s say it might do $20 million in 2010, though that could be generous, given the tepid rebound. So $20 million would be an average of about $1.6 million a month. Thirteen million monthly uniques, $1.6 million a month would mean about 12 cents a unique visitor per month
My guess is that HuffPo's 12 cents per unique visitor is much more in line with most web site earnings versus the off the chart number by NYT, which is a testament to the value of an established name and a powerful advertising sales force.

HuffPo apparently gets this. BI again:

Web traffic for The Huffington Post, which turned five on Sunday, is massive—in February, it rocketed past 40 million unique monthly viewers, according to one metric. (Nielsen put it at 13 million uniques in March.) But the site has yet to turn a profit.

That's about to change, according to CEO Eric Hippeau, who tells MediaWeek that HuffPo will become profitable in 2010 for the first time since it launched on May 9, 2005...

How are they gonna pull it off?

For one thing, they're building up their sales team. Since coming on last September, Coleman's brought on 18 "experienced sales executives" who have scored deals with big advertisers like General Electric, Siemens, Mercedes, HP, IBM and Discovery....

3 comments:

  1. That's shocking to me, that HuffPo has never made money. I just assumed their gossipy articles and pics of half-naked celebrities were done for money. I guess they believe in the cause?

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  2. I see the Murphy wit of old is back in full force. You should go save a country about once a month, just to recharge your juices. Your Haiti trip seemed to work.

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  3. Wonder what Drudge's numbers look like compared with HuffPo. He's certainly got a leaner operation.

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