Gawker Media and the Value of 'Branded Traffic'

Perhaps in light of recent debate over what content and readership leads to a successful ad-based Web site, Gawker’s explanation of a metric that shows its value to readers, published nearly a month ago on the blog’s narrowly read “Advertising” vertical, has been making the rounds on Twitter today. This morning, we’ve seen Gawker publisher Nick Denton, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon and GroundReport CEO Rachel Sterne all point to the article.

Gawker’s “branded traffic” metric — the number of times someone types a Gawker Web address into their browser’s url bar, plus the number of direct searches for a Gawker brand name — reflects readers’ desire to read content from Gawker specifically.

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