Matt Drudge and his popular “Drudge Report” not only crushed the competition during the election with over 1 billion views month, but he did it the old fashioned way: through reader loyalty.
Where other news media websites rely on others, like Drudge, to refer readers to them, 88 percent of Drudge’s readers start directly to his homepage and return often, a publisher’s dream for virtually every other news site but a reality for the 20-year-old Drudge Report.
A new analysis for advertisers, and provided to Secrets, shows that his 88 percent reader loyalty is nearly twice the media average of 47 percent. For comparison, 55 percent of CNN readers start on its homepage. For Fox, it’s 58 percent.
“Drudge is so well known that it is a starting point. That showcases Drudge’s loyalty and it is very impressive,” said Vipul Mistry, of Reston, Va., based Intermarkets Inc., which helps advertisers place ads.
His 88 percent loyalty is even better than it was a year ago, at 87 percent.
The report also showed how good Drudge is for the bottom line of other media by driving traffic to their sites.
For the uninitiated, Drudge posts headlines from other news sites that he finds interesting and newsworthy. It is typically a mix of political and international news spiced up with Hollywood and celebrity news, sports and news of the weird. Those headlines link directly to the source, typically a mainstream media outlet.
Mistry’s report shows that Drudge links can drive 37 percent of another website’s traffic. “It’s a win-win,” said Mistry. The graphic below shows several examples.
Mistry did the report, however, to show that while many news junkies may view Drudge readers as interested mostly in politics, they have broader interests as proven by sites they use to either come into Drudge or click out to, typically prompted by one of his headlines.
For example, shoppers come from or go to Amazon and Home Depot, auto enthusiasts from or to NASCAR.com, social network fans from or to Reddit.com and those interested in arts and entertainment from or to TMZ.com.
Mistry, armed with data from Similarweb, was also able to calculate some of Drudge’s referral numbers. To TMZ, for example last year, Drudge sent 5.7 million. To HollwoodReporter.com it was 28 million.
“There is a lot more depth about his readers,” said Mistry. “This shows that they have multiple interests, not just in political news,” he added.
And, said Mistry, while other sites can fade over time, Drudge’s has continued to add readers and users. “He hasn’t lost his audience. In fact, it’s growing and it’s very sophisticated,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
