Growing Demand Blog

There are many ways to keep score of how the millions of Internet destinations are faring, but the one number everyone stays glued to is comScore’s monthly audience report for US web properties. If you’re a media buyer or brand marketer, this is a key public metric that helps you decide where to spend your advertising dollars.

For that reason, we’ve always kept a careful eye on comScore ourselves.  And we are pleased to announce that in the April 2009 results for US Audience growth, Demand Media leapt to the 26^th position!

To put that in perspective, just a year ago, we were ranked 43^rd. Over the past 12 months comScore reports that our unique visitors increased by 44%, and we jumped 17 spots in their rankings. Some of the notable names that we’ve passed include ESPN, Disney Online, Time Warner and Gannett.

I’m particularly proud of the way we’ve achieved this growth – purely organically. In the past twelve months, we’ve grown through terrific execution on the properties that we already owned such as eHow, Cracked, Trails and GolfLink. The one admirable exception is LIVESTRONG.COM, which we created and launched last June – so even that growth came from inside Demand Media.

Within our own walls, it’s been obvious for awhile that we have cracked the code on how to create and grow great web properties. You grow your audience with compelling content, produced at unprecedented scale and speed. Then you keep the audience engaged and returning through the innovative application of social media tools.

And we’re sharing the secrets behind our success with hundreds of other media companies and marketers. Check out Demand Studios for content and Pluck for social media tools. They are the killer one-two punch helping drive our success, and they can do the same for your business.

By the way – as I mentioned at the beginning of this post – comScore metrics are just one way of keeping score online. Inside Demand Media we have the benefit of detailed data around visitors, visits, engagement, community participation, subscriptions, revenue and profitability. I am pleased to share that all of these are “up and to the right” in ways that are even more exciting than the numbers that comScore reports.

In a world where there is almost no good news about media companies, we continue to work hard at being a newsworthy exception.

Larry Fitzgibbon is Demand Media's EVP of Demand Brands, the company's rapidly growing network of media properties.