I decided not to publish this earlier today… but now that Gawker is also on the case, what the heck?!
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Oh, how I love spin.
I should probably abstain, but I’m a sucker for slapping hypocrites.
When Nikki Finke sold her blog to Jay Penske, journalists looking into her numbers and reporting back about numbers from reporting services were rebuked by Nikki herself, as she explained that she had her private measuring system and that her numbers were bigger than reported elsewhere.
Today, she and Penske are touting a ComScore that claims she has more readers than both trades combined.
Next month, ComScore will be wrong and someone else will be right.
Why is Penske releasing this nonsense (picked up by one outlet… Nikki)? Ad sales.
There are two constants in this little universe of spun numbers.
1. The survey sites do not do a good job of measuring niche sites. Simple test. ComScore surveys 1 million US computers. How many industry professionals do you know who are measured?
2. Math is always iffy in dealing with the web. In web speak, the trades subscription base alone is about 880,000 unique visitors in a month.
Conversely, 1,111,000 Unique Visitors is about 15,000 readers a day on Mondays – Thursdays and about 200k a day Fri-Sun, when the Nikki’s blog is promoted as the top box office source on Drudge. Of course, that is assuming that the ComScore numbers are accurate… and there is no real proof of that, other than the fact that studios, desperate for measurements, believe in them.
It is notable that Penske doesn’t offer any of the actual in-house numbers on Nikki’s page. Are we to believe that the survey is dead-on accurate? Magic 8-Ball says, “No Chance.”
No one can say that Nikki has not done remarkably well for a single person blogging. She gets a lot of attention in Traditional Media and that Drudge link each weekend is like gold for her. And yes, the trade press numbers are in decline, especially with the window being closed at Variety.
There is little question that Nikki has the most read blog in the industry right now. But that is one page. Even looking at the numbers in the press release, it is clear that The Industry is not being measured by ComScore. To give the devil her due, do you know any one who reads Nikki in the business who only goes on her page twice a month? Of course not. But that is what he ComScore detail suggests. Even if you break down the uniques to daily visitors, you’re still looking at 2 views a day. For the Nikki obsessed – you know who you are – that’s a quarter of less of your daily visits.
Let’s not bullshit an industry of bullshitters.
Nikki has done great for herself. She has not “surpassed the combined number of total unique visitors on both Variety.com (515,000) and HollywoodReporter.com (336,000) and their print editions.” Her page is clearly read more widely and more often than BFD or any other single blog or column in Variety or THR or clearly, MCN and The Hot Blog.
I learned this lesson myself at one point, when I boasted about our numbers outdoing the traders. But then, I was asked how I knew what the traffic at The Trades really was, given that I was explaining that our numbers are not effectively reflected by the sources I was taking into account. Good point. And I haven’t made that unsure boast again.
If I were advertising things for agents and studio execs who are scared of their own shadows, I would be buying ads on there, for sure, even if it meant I was supporting the worst, most unethical behavior in the industry and showed no concern about being associated with a hateful, abusive, often misleading gossip.
Bottom Line: None of the industry sites are bought for ads because of raw numbers of uniques. We are all bought to read the niche. Nikki’s blog is a niche blog that gets an extra goose of mainstream attention because of the Drudge link. But as anyone in this realm knows, like a film festival, the profit is not in how many butts you put in the seats, but what butts you draw attention from and how interested they are in what you have to say. That is Nikki’s strength right now. How she gets that attention is her weakness, in terms of advertising buys.
I suppose if she was sold out on Phase I ad space, as MCN is for the fourth year in the last five, she wouldn’t have to be out trying to convince people she’s the place to buy ads. And in this regard, she is, indeed, ahead of even The Trades.

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