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ADVERTISING AGE WEBSITE ANALYSIS

WEBSITE OVERVIEW

CONTENT ANALYSIS

AdvertisingAge (AdAge) is a website that provides the latest advertising industry news

and premium data services for marketers and other advertising agencies.

AdAge is split into two different parts. The main site is free to use and provides news on

a multitude of different subjects. These subjects include, but arent limited to advertising,

marketing, digital media, the media and advertising agencies. Each section on the site

includes articles, mostly news, that are related to each of the subjects that can be found

in the websites navigational bar. Theres even a section on the website for following the

advertising and marketing tactics of the current presidential candidates. This section will

be archived following the conclusion of the presidential race on December 25 th,

according to their media kits schedule.

Articles that can be found in each of the categories include opinion pieces on relevant

subjects to the category you are currently browsing through. If you want opinions on

marketing or advertising campaigns, AdAge probably has it, though the curation of

opinion pieces is heavily overshadowed by news. Informative guides and QA interviews

with industry professionals are also available on AdAge, but again, the supply of those

articles is heavily outweighed by AdAges focus on covering news.

AdAge actually has quite a bit of content to read through, but their homepage does a

very poor job of making it easy for the reader to find all that content. For example, none
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of AdAges articles on their homepage display the date, unless you click on the article.

The only way you can see the date without clicking on the article is by either going to

one of the navigational links that take you to the category page, or by clicking View All

The Latest News link found in the right sidebar on the homepage. Unfortunately, that

link is also decidedly difficult to see because its a light grey link on a white page.

AdAge has a video section on its navigational bar that provides the user with

informational videos about a wide range of subjects and are made in an easy to view

format with short runtimes and captions on screen displaying information. The videos

dont seem to be posted on a consistent basis though, as the last video was published

on August 26th and the one before that was published on August 24 th, with no videos

having been published since then. Some videos on the site are also behind AdAges

premium paywall.

Another section on the site found in the top navigation points users towards an Events

page which includes different industry events that you can register to attend. The most

recent event was held on September 5th which was for the A-List awards which is an

event held to honor the best ad agencies and innovators in the advertising industry. The

next event that users can register for will be held on September 28 th and is called

Karaoke for a Cause.

This event pits ad agencies in a karaoke contest against each other for a $10,000 prize

that will be awarded to a charity of that ad agencys choosing. In addition, the events

page also has online webcasts that users can register for which are essentially free

information sessions for those interested in learning how to improve their brands or are
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in general interested in the advertising industry. The next webcast will be held on

September 14th and is called Location, Location, Location.

In the top navigation of the website, theres also a link to a section of the site called the

DataCenter which hosts a ton of information on ad agencies, media spending, job data

and much more. To view any of this data, you must be a premium subscriber to the

website, however so I cant detail how much information is really there without paying

money to see it.

AdAge has chosen to go for a premium subscriber based monetization system rather

than hosting advertisements on their website. There are ads, but they are focused on

products provided by AdAge. For example, above the fold you will find an ad to become

a subscriber for their premium datacenter that I mentioned above. Further down the

homepage you will also find ads for events AdAge is hosting, such as after mentioned

webinar session taking place on September 14 th.

Also included in the top navigation of AdAge are two sections called Jobs and On

Campus. The jobs link will take you to a page called AdAge Talent Works and has

sections available for both job seekers and employers.

The job seekers section allows users looking to apply for a job in the advertising or

marketing industry to search for available jobs through a number of different filtering

options. These options include the type of industry you want to work in, what state and

so on.

Employers can use the same information to find people looking for jobs or can even

create an account to sift through resumes that have been uploaded to AdAges Talent
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Works page. Theres a link to a Salary Tool page in the Talent Works navigation bar, but

it seems that page is no longer active.

The On Campus section provides students and educators with the opportunity to

subscribe to specific AdAge programs to get access to a bunch of information on the

advertising, marketing and PR industries. Educators who use a an AdAge text book can

subscribe to AdAge and have access to pretty much everything AdAge offers through

their premium memberships.

GENERAL COMPANY INFORMATION

Advertising Age was founded in 1994 as is owned by parent company Crain

Communications. Crain Communications was founded in 1916 and is currently

celebrating their 100th anniversary as a company. Crain owns 21 different publications

that focus on all kinds of different business industries including but not limited to, the

advertising, automotive, healthcare and investment industries.

Crain Communications has been a family owned business since its inception and

continues today under the leadership of four members of the Crain family: Keith

(Chairman), Rance (President), KC (Director of Corporate Operations) and Christopher

(Director of Strategic Operations).

Altogether, Crains publications reach around 6 million readers monthly. However, some

websites are doing better than others as evidenced by Crains recent decision to close

one of their investment focused sites, Investment Business. This was announced on

August 9th, 2016.

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COMPETING WEBSITE

Adweek.com is one of AdAges primary competitors. The website focuses basically on

the same type of content that AdAge does, and has a very similar content output to

AdAge in terms of diversity and number of posts per day.

Items found in AdWeeks main navigation bar:

The Press
Television
Technology
Advertising & Branding
AdFreak (Column section that highlights best and worst of advertising, branding

and design)
Video

AdWeeks design is much tighter than AdAges and puts more of a focus on content

over a good looking design. For websites like AdAge and AdWeek that cover news and

other events, this design works because it provides the user with a lot of options for

what content they want to read. Its a slicker looking website than AdAges grid based

design that makes everything look blocky rather than clean and easy to read.

On the left side of AdWeeks homepage youll find a section called The Feed which

lists all of AdWeeks most recent posts, with the newest posts at the top of the feed. In

the center of the homepage, AdWeek has a section dedicated to the sites featured

stories, or editors picks.

While this doesnt really follow the upper left ideology most websites implement, having

your featured stories front and center works well for AdWeek, even if its untraditional.

The reason it works so well, however, is due to AdWeek using a different font color (red)
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for the headline of the first featured story in that column and quickly catches your

attention. Articles in the editors pick column also have images attached to them, while

the rest of the links on the page do not.

In the right column of the page you will find a section for whats most popular on

AdWeek. This is a great feature to have as people are used to checking Twitter or

Facebook for whats trending and are usually the stories theyll read through first to see

what everyone is talking about. This also keeps older stories relevant and continues to

generate page views and ad impressions for the website.

One issue with AdWeek is the placement of a leaderboard / large leaderboard ad above

the fold that pushes the content down below the fold. This especially hurts the editors

pick section of the website due to the fact that you cant see the image attached with the

article unless you scroll down the page, a problem that AdAge does not encounter with

their ad placements on the homepage.

However, AdAge does house their ads in-house so they have complete control over

where they are placed. AdWeek seems to be using a third party vendor for their ads,

and thus need to place them in more profitable areas on their site due to their reliance

on ad impressions and not subscription based services.

TRAFFIC COMPARISON CHART (AUG SEP 2016)

STATISTICS US UNIQUE GLOBAL GLOBAL GLOBAL

(MONTHLY) VISITORS UNIQUE PAGE ALEXA
VISITORS VIEWS RANK
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ADAGE 1,100,000 1,600,000 4,200,000 10,635

ADWEEK 838,000 1,400,000 3,700,000 3,488
US ALEXA RANK BOUNCE DAILY DAILY
RATE PAGE TIME
VIEWS
ADAGE 3,666 75.30% 1.49 2:24
ADWEEK 1,600 74.10% 1.57 2:22

DESIGN & LAYOUT ANALYSIS

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PAGE ELEMENTS OF A DESKTOP

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ABOVE THE FOLD

AdAge isnt the prettiest looking website, but its Above the Fold section is pretty well

organized and presents information well. The content is set up in a way that moves your

eyes from the left to the right as the first featured story has the largest picture and title,

with the secondary feature stories housing smaller images and smaller titles

immediately to the right.

Depending on the size of your monitor / screen and the length of the main featured

posts title, some of the title may be cut off at the bottom of the screen below the fold.

This could be fixed by extending the width of the main featured post for articles with

longer titles. The image is what will catch the users eye immediately though, so its

important to note that its not cut off below the fold.

From there, the websites sidebar, which isnt really much of a sidebar, provides a few

more links to content with an extra link to allow readers to view all of AdAges latest

posts. Below that there is an ad that sits above the fold to guarantee earning an

impression every time someone loads up the home page. Regular articles feature a
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more distinct sidebar with an advertisement and social links above the fold, with related

story links to follow below.

The content is all modular and has a flow to it that you want with modern web design.

Its clean, not flashy and presents information well, however, I do think AdAge could use

a bit more content above the fold to make sure theres enough content there to actually

catch someones attention. With only a total of eight different stories to choose from

above the fold, theres not a whole to really grab the users attention when compared to

other websites that really use the above the fold section to highlight their hottest or most

prominent stories of the day.

Luckily, finding more content is only a scroll or a click away as AdAges navigation has

their categories laid out to take you to the content you want to read quickly without

overwhelming you. Theres a total of nine items in the main navigation: Marketing,

Advertising, Digital, Media, Agency, Data, BtoB, Video and Campaign Trail.

The main navigation bar will also minimize and continue to stay above the fold once

youve made your way further down the page. This is true for every page on the

website.

In the top navigation theres a total of seven items: Creativity, Lookbook, Datacenter,

Resources, Events, Jobs and On Campus. This navigation bar stays above the fold and

does not follow the user down the page.

There is no advert above or below the main navigation area pushing the main featured

content down the page. However, this is not true for the rest of the site as there is a

banner ad on every page, including category/archive pages.

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UPPER LEFT

AdAge utilizes the upper left of their website quite well. Their logo is in a spot that is

easy to spot and isnt too big or too small. Since the websites URL is AdAge.com, its

good that their logo actually spells out the entire name of the website to make sure their

brand is clearly seen as AdvertisingAge and not just, AdAge.

Mentioned earlier in the content analysis, the feature content of the website also utilizes

the upper left by making the biggest image / story the focus of the left area above the

fold. The secondary feature stories feature smaller images immediately to the right,

which makes sure the user is looking at the page from left to right.

Article pages follow a similar format to the homepage. The logo remains in the same

spot and is followed by a leaderboard / large leaderboard advertisement directly below.

The size of the ad depends on what is currently being served to the user when the page

loads.

Below all of that is usually the feature image of the story, which is still above the fold

and in the upper left. Since the advertisement pushes the content down the page a bit,

you sometimes do have to scroll down a bit to see the full image. Not really a huge deal,

but it does make actually reading the content a little less enticing when an ad is

seemingly the first thing for you to focus on.

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DESKTOP (LEFT) vs MOBILE (RIGHT)

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COMPARE DESKTOP TO MOBILE

AdAge uses a completely responsive design to account for the wide range of different

devices and screen sizes the website is viewed on. When viewing the website on a

mobile device, the content on the website is condensed and made viewable on mobile

devices by listing everything rather than using a grid view like the desktop version of the

website uses.

The navigation bar on the website reformats to a hamburger menu on mobile devices,

once again listing all of the websites navigational items in a vertical list rather than the

default horizontal view. Perfect for mobile design.

The responsive design keeps with the desktop view of the site and features the

websites main feature story above the fold with the other two featured stories following

just below. More articles are found below that in what would normally be the websites

sidebar on the home page and then an advertisement follows that.

On a mobile device, you dont want too much content above the fold as that reduces the

size of everything on the page and makes it hard to read. As with other websites like

Twitter and Facebook, users are used to continuous scrolling to see what content is all

on the page and the responsive design on AdAge uses this to its advantage.

Even though all of the same content that is on the desktop version of the site is on the

mobile version, it can feel like theres more content to read when its shown in more of a

list form rather than the way its designed on desktop view of the website. The

responsive design is very clean and organized and translates well from desktop to

mobile devices.
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ADS

AD sizes in use on AdAge.com

300x250
720x90 (Leaderboard)
970x90 (Large Leaderboard)
970x250 (Billboard)

AdAge has a number of ads on their website that directly correspond with the IAB

standard ad sizes that are found on most websites. The homepage has a total of five

ads, with one 300x250 ad found above the fold. Below that are two more 300x250 ads,

followed by a 970x90 ad and one more 300x250 ad near the bottom of the page.

Article pages, on average, have four ads. One large leaderboard ad is right below the

main navigation, with another 300x250 ad found in the sidebar. Below the fold there are

two more ads. Another 300x250 ad can usually be found in the sidebar area, with

another large leaderboard ad found below the end of the article content. On some

articles, that second 300x250 ad may be found within the content on the left side of the

page, rather than the right in the side bar. This is usually for fullwidth feature articles that

do not have a sidebar so your focus is completely on the content.

Category pages also have four ads. Each page contains a large leaderboard or

leaderboard ad above the fold, but below the main navigation, and will alternate

depending on which ad is being served when loading the page. A 300x250 ad is also

above the fold and is inserted in the content area to the right of the first two articles.

Two more ads are found on each category page, with another 300x250 ad found within

the content area below the fold, and above the footer there is a large leaderboard ad.
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Advertisements on AdAge are placed in unobtrusive spots and dont obstruct the users

view from reading or viewing the page. The ads are also seemingly served up by AdAge

themselves, rather than through a third-party provider so they are all related to the sites

content and or products they offer. None of the ads I saw were animated or flashy in any

way and blend right in with the content as to not even seem like theyre really ads in the

traditional sense.

TRAFFIC ANALYSIS
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According to Quantacast, AdAge reached a total of 2.1M (million) unique visitors from

August 12th to September 10th. During that same time period, AdAge accrued a total of

3.3M visits and 5.7M global page views. Quantacast by default measures a websites

traffic on a monthly basis.

A unique visitor is counted each time a new IP address visits a website. The same

user could provide the website with a unique visit each time they visit that same website

on another device, as each device has its own IP address. A visitor is counted each

time a person visits the website, even if its from the same IP address. Page views are

counted each time a visitor views a page on the website, which is why that number is

much higher than both the unique visit and visit counts.

The majority of AdAges traffic comes from the US with a total of 1.4M unique visitors,

followed by the rest of the world at 0.6M. AdAge is also viewed pretty much equally on

desktop and mobile devices with 48.9% of visitors viewing the site on a mobile device

and 51.1% viewing the site through a desktop.

A website traffic ranking source, Alexa.com, lists AdAge with a global rank of 10,578 and

is ranked 3,621 in the US. Alexas ranks website by a predicted popularity algorithm that

rates a website based on the amount of average daily visits and page views the website

received over the period of a month.

The global rank is based on basically what it says. The website is compared to every

website around the world and the US rank compares the website to websites that are

based out of the US. Globally, AdAge is most popular in the US, followed by the United

Kingdom (4,528), Canada (5,740), India (15,546) and Germany (15,850).

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Some other important statistics that can be viewed about AdAge on Alexa is the

websites bounce rate, daily page views per visitor and the daily time on the site. The

websites bounce rate is currently much higher the average bounce rate for media and

news websites. The average is 55.56% and AdAge is currently holding a 75.30%, which

is up 5% from the previous month. AdAges visitors on average currently visit 1.49

pages per visit and spend around 2 minutes and 23 seconds checking out content on

AdAge.

A websites bounce rate is basically used to determine if a visitor comes to the website,

views one page and then leaves the website. Most media and news websites will have

higher bounce rates due to users coming to the article for one specific article or piece of

media. Online stores and other product based websites have much lower bounce rate

numbers due to users browsing their site for different products. Either way, you typically

want the bounce rate of your website to be lower rather than higher as that means users

are viewing more pages and generating more ad impressions and revenue for said

website.

The other two statistics described above a pretty self-explanatory. Alexa calculates how

many pages are viewed by a single visitor on a daily basis and how much time each

visitor spends on the website. Unlike the bounce rate, you want these statistics to be

higher rather than lower as again, that means users are viewing more pages and

generating ad impressions and spending time actually reading or viewing your content.

MEDIA KIT INFO

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AdAges media kit is very extensive and includes a metric ton of information about the

website. However, whats most important to potential advertisers are the sites traffic

stats that can be found on page four.

According to AdAges media kit, the website on a monthly basis reaches 1.9M unique

visitors and 85% of those visitors come to the site to keep up on breaking news and

events in the marketing and advertising industries. The website also sends out a

newsletter daily that includes all of the most important news covered during that day.

That newsletter alone reaches over 609,000 subscribers. These statistics were all

reported on in January 2016 via Omniture and Sitecatalyst.

The media kit also includes all the info advertisers need to see what AdAges rates are

for putting ads in newsletters, full site takeovers and individual advertisement spots

throughout the site.

The media kit also includes information on AdAges entire editorial schedule for the year

which is useful for advertisers who want to place their ads on the site during specific

times in the year or when specific articles are running on the site.

TRAFFIC SOURCES

The vast majority of AdAges traffic arrives on the site from Google. According to Alexa

the percentage of unique visitors that are referred to the site through Google is around

32.6% of their unique visitors which means AdAge does a very good job with their

search engine optimization.

AdAge also receives a lot of traffic through social media outlets such as Facebook,

Twitter and surprisingly, Linkedin. 6.5% of AdAges traffic during a months time (Aug
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Sept) arrived via Facebook, 3.9% via Linkedin and 3.2% via Twitter. One of the most

surprising traffic sources for AdAge that Alexa lists, however, is one of their direct

competitors, AdWeek. During the time period mentioned above, 2.3% of AdAges traffic

arrived on the site via AdWeek.

Lots of websites also link to AdAges content with Alexa listing over 20,000 websites that

have backlinks to AdAge. Amazon, Yahoo and MSN are three of the top websites with

AdAge backlinks, according to the Alexa report.

LINK POPULARITY ANALYSIS

Backlinks to a website are necessary for websites like AdAge as that heightens the

websites credibility and status in their industry. Since AdAge is one of the leading

providers of news on the advertising and marketing industries, it is to be expected that

the website has a lot of backlinks from other outlets hopefully sourcing their content.

A backlink is essentially counted every time another website links back to a site in their

own content. For example, if AdAge covered a story on the NFLs advertisements during

the Super Bowl and AdWeek covered a story using information from AdAges story and

linked back to them, that would be a backlink. Each time a website links back to another

site a backlink is counted.

The other statistic tracked by Majestic is referring domains, which is slightly different

than backlinks. The main difference is that each backlink is counted even if theres

multiple links back to AdAge on the same website. When counting referring domains,

each domain is only counted once as its tracking each individual website, not page, that

links back to AdAge.

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According to Majestic, a backlink tracking website, AdAge is doing quite well in terms of

acquiring backlinks from other websites. With over 4,000,000 backlinks accrued over

the past month and 61,000 referring domains, AdAge is a widely sourced site from

across the net. Over the past five years, AdAge has accrued over 46,000,000 backlinks

and 208,000 referring domains.

Majestic also tracks two other important things, that unfortunately arent explained very

well by the website. One of those statistics is called Trust Flow which measures the

amount of clicks from other trusted sites to the domain being tracked, in this case

AdAge. The other statistic is Citation Flow which measures the amount of citations or

source links to a domain. The higher the number the better for both of the following

statistics.

WEBS EXTERNAL REFERRING TRUST FLOW CITATION

ITE BACKLINKS DOMAINS FLOW
ADAG 4,376,691 61,003 65 69
E
ADWE 5,228,028 74,370 66 78
EK

AdAge
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AdWeek

SOCIAL MEDIA SHARE TOOLS

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AdAge uses a number of social media share tools on their article pages. On most article

pages, to the right of the title and above the fold. The buttons are colored in grey and

black and dont really standout to the reader and for a site like AdAge, you want those

buttons to stand out to make sure people are actively sharing your content. You will find

buttons to share article posts via the following social media websites and applications:

Twitter
Facebook
Google Plus
Linkedin
Email

When you click the button for the social media outlet you want to share content on, a

pop-up screen will show up and allow you to either post the content right away or edit it

the text and media assets to your liking. The default text that will appear when sharing

an article from AdAge includes the title of the article and a link to the post.

Some article pages will have the social media share tools in a different location

depending on the format of the article. Below you will find an example of a feature

article that uses a fullwidth format and thus the social share tools are in a different

location. They also follow the user down the page, which is a good reminder for users

that they can share the content as they continue to read if they dont notice the buttons

immediately.

One thing that AdAge doesnt do with their social media share buttons that a lot of other

sites do is include how many shares each article has. This is usually a good statistic to

have accompany the share tools as it can give readers and potential advertisers a

better idea of just how popular an article is.

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ADAGE

ADWEEK
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CONCLUSION

AdAge is a surprisingly successful site in my opinion. Even though AdAge relies on

subscription based model and requires users to pay a subscription fee to view the sites

content, it still competes with other outlets in the advertising and marketing industry like

AdWeek.

The fact that so many people subscribe to AdAges content speaks highly of the

websites credibility and user experience. Its a site that is well designed, easy to read

and utilizes a number of great services like their Data Center, On Campus and Talent

Works pages.