Team sites have home (page) advantage over ESPN.com

When it comes to pure reach to the on-line audience, the big portals and major media sites have impressive stories to tell. In the sports cateogory, for example, ESPN reaches 15 million monthly unique users and generates 945 million monthly page views. These numbers are mind boggling.

No doubt there are a lot of media buyers out there who drool over this gigantic on-line audience. It must be pretty easy to justify recommending ESPN.com to reach men on-line. After all, ESPN is a strong brand, and its audience is huge.

Buying ESPN is convenient too.

One purchase order has the potential to reach 15% of the on-line group of men 18-34 (ESPN Media Kit).

Bottom line, ESPN reaches a lot of male sports fans and therefore has a big quantity advantage over sites like ours.

But I wonder if those buying ESPN.com are paying too much for the reach and convenience, and missing a “grass roots” opportunity to REALLY set their own brands apart?

Reach is good, but what are you reaching for?

I am not the interactive brand manager for a major, multi-national corporation, but if I were I might not let my “media” buyer decide which Web site to buy. And I wouldn’t make a media decision based on reach alone. Instead, I might look for a site that could offer partnership potential. A site (or network of sites) that could customize my brand message and position my brand more effectively with target affinity groups.

I would “sponsor” that group in hopes that the audience of that site to feel closer to my brand as a result of my “sponsorship”. This is tough to do on a gigantic site like ESPN, but much easier to do on NFL team sites.

When it comes to real engagement, I believe team sites have more to offer than even the mighty ESPN.

Teams sites like Colts.com may be the best kept secret (i.e. biggest value) in the on-line marketing universe. After all, for Colts.com at least, nearly 95% of our visitors are AVID Colts fans who visit the site religiously at least once every week. Yes, these AVID fans do visit other sports sites including ESPN, but for news about their favorite team, no site beats the team home page.

Team sites reach more AVIDS more often

When it comes to reaching sports fans where they LIVE, I think team sites like Colts.com have a QUALTIY advantage.

We recently surveyed users of Colts.com and asked them which Websites they visit most often. The following chart shows that Colts.com is more popular (among avid Colts fans) than ESPN (which doesn’t even make the list) AND NFL.com, a site with traffic that rivals ESPN.

When we asked users of Colts.com which other sites they visit for Colts info, they ranked NFL.com (85%) well ahead of ESPN (73%).

NFL is America’s Game

According to ESPN Sports Poll 2005, NFL is the favorite sport for 1 of every 4 Americans, making it the number one spectator sport by far. Thirty-percent of all NFL fans are considered AVID. AVID fans are those who say they are “very interested” in the NFL.

It’s likely that ESPN gets a lot of its traffic from NFL fans. But those very same NFL fans look at ESPN and team sites differently. The team sites have a place closer to the heart than any other site could. It is this emotional connection to the team that gives team site its potential for bigger sponsor impact.

Team sites reach more AVIDS, more often

By my own calculations, I believe team sites have the highest quality audience simply because we OWN the avids. Here’s why I believe this to be true:

Whereas overall US NFL fan base breaks down 58% male / 42% female, visitors at Colts.com skew more heavily male (75%). This falls directly in line with ESPN Sports Poll statistics which indicate that 30% of all AVID NFL fans are female. This gender breakdown combined with the huge percentage (95%) of fans who visit the site at least once-a-week indicates to me that these fans are highly engaged (i.e. avid).

Whereas ESPN reaches 15% of men 18-34 every month, Colts.com reaches 100% of on-line Colts avids – at least once – every week! Right now the on-line advertising world is filled with brands that are buying banners as if they were TV spots, purely on a CPM / target demo basis. I would suggest that results for these campaigns could be dramatically improved if brands became sponsors, and worked with teams to personalize messaging for each team.

Team site by team site, our audience is much smaller than ESPN.com (not to mention the cable network and magazine readership), but visitors (fans) are far more passionate. And if national advertisers begin to run campaigns across the entire league (through the team sites plus NFL.com) they’ve got a much better chance of tapping the REAL passion.

According to ClickZ, 2007 may prove to be the year of the niche site.

Predictions from ClickZ: Engaging Reach Emerges as a Mantra for Advertisers: In the world of digital communications, “reach” is just step one, not an end goal. Simply reaching a consumer isn’t enough. And if you focus solely on engagement, you won’t reach enough viewers to make an impact. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to measure “engaging reach.”

In addition to “engaging reach” the ClickZ article highlights the potential of “niche site social networks like My Colts Network:

Niche Social Media Sites Achieve Critical Mass: …vertical (or special interest) social networking sites are getting traction. Senior citizens, pregnant mothers, pet owners, wine collectors, sports fanatics, and adventure travelers are all examples of passionate communities offering opportunities. Look for lots of merger and acquisition activity in this space in the coming year as companies try to build their communities — fast. Why? Any media property or entertainment company with a connected audience is quickly developing communities. People want to connect and they generate a lot of page views when they do.

In the future, page views may go the way of the Dodo

There are several reasons why quality should trump quantity:

1. Brands care about results – it matters not how many people see an ad if nobody responds
2. Quanity is tough to measure accurately - Alexa, Nielsen, MediaMetrics…nobody agrees!
3. AJAX enhances the quality of the site visit, but reduces the number of page views -

In this, the age of the customer, I believe that improving the on-line experience will win over running the advertising meter; Or at least it can win – if the site positions itself correctly.