Erin Pettigrew (via soupsoup)While most people track Gawker Media’s influence via reach metrics like pageviews or uniques, we’ve been quietly tending a metric that explains something more important — our depth.
While distributing content across the web is essential for attracting the interest of Internet passersby, courting these wanderers, massaging them into occasional visitors, and finally gaining their affection as daily readers is far more important. This core audience — borne of a compounding of word of mouth, search referrals, article recommendations, and successive enjoyed visits that result in regular readership — drives our rich site cultures and premium advertising products.
We’ve been measuring this recurring reader affection as branded traffic (direct type-in visits + branded search queries in Google Analytics)
