El Modelo también golpea a los blogs

La crisis y las debilidades del modelo de financiamiento de los medios online también está azotando a los blogs -al menos a aquellos que son símbolos universales de efectividad, estabilidad y ganancias- y los ha puesto por debajo de sus presupuestos anuales. Son caídas similares a las que muestran el resto de los medios en EE.UU., sin embargo, son persistente las dudas sobre la proyección de los actuales modelos de contenidos gratuito (discusión abierta un poco a la fuerza), el tipo de masividad que representa la web y, por supuesto, la efectividad de la publicidad (y esto a pesar que seguirá siendo clave por lo menos en el mediano plazo), como principal motor de ingresos. Muchos de los blogs, luego de ganar la batalla de las audiencias, simplemente apostaron por convertirse en medios masivos, cobrar por CPM y recolectar banners y displays a través de la venta de avisos a empresas como FreeCollegeInfo y Vonage. Pero muy pocos han derivado su éxito en generar nuevas estrategias publicitarias, en especial cuando la crisis hizo más aguda la caída de ingresos. La lenta capacidad de respuesta de algunos blogs, incluso para renovar sus contenidos como soporte de auspiciadores, también ha nublado el actual escenario. De hecho, Gawker -que tiene 23 millones más de visitas únicas, 3 millones más que el NYT- debió cerrar 6 sitios y alejarse de la farándula dura. Con CPM que no superan los US$3, los blogs deberán demostrar este año que no sólo son una alternativa fresca, necesaria y de mayor independencia que los medios tradicionales, sino que además llevan la vanguardia en las nuevas estrategias comerciales. En el siguiente artículo más detalles sobre la situación de los 25 blogs más rentables del planeta.

1. Gawker Properties. This blog company has a number of successful sites including Gawker, Defamer, Jezebel, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and Jalopnik. In combination, the sites have about 23 million unique visitors and over 200 million pageviews a month. The company’s owner, Nick Denton, says the firm’s advertising is holding up this quarter. Traffic at most of the sites is still growing, in some cases at a rate of over 50%. The average CPM for each page across all of the properties is estimated at $15. That makes Gawker at $36 million business. Based on staffing levels, the company should have margins well above 50%. With an 8x operating income valuation, the company is worth $170 million.

2. Huffington Post. HuffPo is probably the most well-known “blog” in the world. The company recently raised $25 million. There has been a great deal of concern that once the national election ended in November that the site’s audience would drop because of its focus on politics. All of the available audience measurement services show it holding its number of visitor flat if not slightly up. The range of unique visitors among the services measuring Huffington is fairly broad with an average of about 12 million a month. Pageviews per month should be at least 180 million. HuffPo’s current valuation is being undermined by the quality of its advertising. To fill its inventory, the company is selling a large portion of its ads to marketers like FreeCollegeInfo and Vonage. This brings its CPM per page as low as $5, putting a 2009 annual revenue estimate at about $11 million. Huffington appears to have about 50 full-time employees, operating costs like those of a traditional online news site, and a technology platform that is expensive to maintain and build out. The cost to run the operation is probably over $18 million a year. Owning Huffington would be a prize, especially for a major media company. Normal media multiples don’t apply. The company is worth more than $90 million.

3. The Drudge Report is the father of news and news opinion blogs. Compete and Quantcast have very different unique visitor counts. The number is almost certainly over five million a month. Quantcast puts pageviews at 742 million per month, which is almost certainly too high. The ads on the site appear to be almost all network sold and the CPM per page is not likely to be above $2.50. If the site has 500 million pageviews, revenue would be $15 million a year. Margins should be very high, so operating income should be $8 million. Without Drudge himself, the site has almost no value. At a 6x multiple, Drudge is worth $48 million.

1. Gawker Media: $170 million. Last year: $150 million.
2. Huffington Post: $90 million. Last year: $70 million.
3. The Drudge Report: $48 million. Last year: $10 million.
4. Perez Hilton: $32 million. Last year: $48 million.
5. Sugar, Inc.: $27 million. Last year: Not listed.
6. TechCrunch. $25 million. Last year: $36 million.
7. MacRumors. $21 million. Last year: $85 million
8. SeekingAlpha. $11 million. Last year: $15 million
9. GigaOm: $9.5 million. Last year: $8.4 million
10. Politico: $8.7 million. Last year: Not listed.