“What’s your audience size?” is wrong question

December 30, 2007 By

I’m reading my feeds this morning and see a few people talking about audience size for videobloggers and other content people. Here’s a sample:


Henry Blodget points out that Perez Hilton has a huge audience, but hasn’t yet been able to sell much advertising to it.

Hugh Macleod applies some new math in figuring out the size of his audience (or other peoples, for that matter).

In the past few years I’ve had some success building audiences, but I found that that’s not really what’s important. It’s not what advertisers REALLY care about.

So, what do they care about?

1. Are you getting content that no one else is? For instance, today over on ScobleShow we have an interview with Rondee. A startup building a conference calling service that’s really great.

2. Does that content cause conversations to happen? If you use Google Blog Search, do you find anyone linking to it?

3. Does that content get noticed in the niche you’re covering? If you’re trying to cover do-it-yourself crafts or robots, for instance, does Make Magazine notice it and link to you?

4. Even more importantly, does it get the most credible and authoritative to link to you? Notice in point #3 I mentioned Make Magazine. In the do-it-yourself movement I can’t think of anything more credible or authoritative. So, getting a link from that matters more than getting a link, from, say, Loren Feldman over at 1938Media. Keep in mind that because Loren is funny his audience size might be bigger than the one hanging out over on Make. But no one will buy an ad on your site cause Loren made fun of it. They might, however, buy an ad if Make links to you a few times a month.

5. Chris Shipley’s Demo Conference proved to me it’s not the size of your audience that matters. It’s WHO is in the audience that matters. She has a micro audience. Usually about 1,000 people. But they include VCs, bloggers, journalists, and other influencers on whether startups get noticed or not. She usually has 60 companies on stage that each paid $18,000 to be there and most people in the audience paid more than $1,000 to listen to them.

6. I’ve been having lots of conversations with my producer, Rocky Barbanica, about the new thing that we’re doing (if you haven’t heard yet, we’re leaving PodTech and starting something new on January 16th — we’ll announce that on the 16th). But I never talk with Rocky about how large my audience will be. No, instead, we’re talking about who we want on the show for the first week. How can we make the quality better? Who is out there who is doing innovative stuff that we can learn from? Epic-FU, for instance, is one show I’m watching a lot. I’ve never heard Zadi or Steve (the two who do Epic-FU) talk about how they can get a large audience (I’ve been on several panels with Zadi). Instead she asks “how can I take my art further?”

And, THAT is the right question.

How can we take our art further?

How come bloggers never obsess about THAT?

…back to reading feeds and thinking about taking my stuff to the next level.

Filed Under: Video
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  • http://www.douglaskarr.com/ Douglas Karr

    “Artists ought to walk a mile in someone else’s pants. That way you’re a mile away and you have their pants.” Joseph P. Blodgett

  • http://www.douglaskarr.com Douglas Karr

    “Artists ought to walk a mile in someone else’s pants. That way you’re a mile away and you have their pants.” Joseph P. Blodgett

  • Rodney Rumford

    Robert,
    It is about creating conversations and reaching multiple points of gravity. Gravity causes people to move and pulls objects toward it(readers & other bloggers).

    It is not how many people you reach… rather… how many people of influence (that you care about) do you reach.

    Nice blog post.

  • Rodney Rumford

    Robert,
    It is about creating conversations and reaching multiple points of gravity. Gravity causes people to move and pulls objects toward it(readers & other bloggers).

    It is not how many people you reach… rather… how many people of influence (that you care about) do you reach.

    Nice blog post.

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  • http://www.centernetworks.com/scoble-on-audience-size-advertising Allen Stern

    Here is my semi-rebuttal to your post Robert.
    http://www.centernetworks.com/scoble-on-audience-size-advertising

    I sure hope we get a chance to sit down and have a conversation sometime – maybe this year at SXSW as we only shook hands last year.

  • http://www.centernetworks.com/scoble-on-audience-size-advertising Allen Stern

    Here is my semi-rebuttal to your post Robert.
    http://www.centernetworks.com/scoble-on-audience-size-advertising

    I sure hope we get a chance to sit down and have a conversation sometime – maybe this year at SXSW as we only shook hands last year.

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth Alfred C Thompson

    Pure numbers are seldom enough. I worry about my target audience. Its not huge – high school CS teachers – but I want to get as many of them as readers as possible. From what I can tell a rather large (even the majority) of my readers are not part of that target. While I am happy they are finding value in what I write getting more of them to read is not something I think about. Its getting the right information for my target and finding ways to let them know about it.

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth Alfred C Thompson

    Pure numbers are seldom enough. I worry about my target audience. Its not huge – high school CS teachers – but I want to get as many of them as readers as possible. From what I can tell a rather large (even the majority) of my readers are not part of that target. While I am happy they are finding value in what I write getting more of them to read is not something I think about. Its getting the right information for my target and finding ways to let them know about it.

  • http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/ Evelyn Rodriguez

    Good points, but I’d take it further. “What advertisers REALLY care about” is the wrong question too.

  • http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com Evelyn Rodriguez

    Good points, but I’d take it further. “What advertisers REALLY care about” is the wrong question too.

  • http://committeetoprotectbloggers.wordpress.com/ Curt

    I concur with Allen on this one, Robert. This seems more like a Blogtopian view of how things _should_ work than a realistic view of how they do. That’s not to say I don’t believe these things should be our focus as writers (or video bloggers, or whatever your medium is). It’s just that I really think advertising buyers in the wider world can’t shake loose the errant thumb of sheer numbers from the scales they use, at least not yet. And perhaps what advertisers care about is, in this era of change, also in flux.

  • http://committeetoprotectbloggers.wordpress.com/ Curt

    I concur with Allen on this one, Robert. This seems more like a Blogtopian view of how things _should_ work than a realistic view of how they do. That’s not to say I don’t believe these things should be our focus as writers (or video bloggers, or whatever your medium is). It’s just that I really think advertising buyers in the wider world can’t shake loose the errant thumb of sheer numbers from the scales they use, at least not yet. And perhaps what advertisers care about is, in this era of change, also in flux.

  • http://committeetoprotectbloggers.wordpress.com Curt

    I concur with Allen on this one, Robert. This seems more like a Blogtopian view of how things _should_ work than a realistic view of how they do. That’s not to say I don’t believe these things should be our focus as writers (or video bloggers, or whatever your medium is). It’s just that I really think advertising buyers in the wider world can’t shake loose the errant thumb of sheer numbers from the scales they use, at least not yet. And perhaps what advertisers care about is, in this era of change, also in flux.

  • http://ericrice.com/ Eric Rice

    Heh, yeah ‘behind’ ain’t a big help. Need more people by my *side*, dude. But I appreciate it.

    Maybe this year would be a good year to start a magazine. Heh.

  • http://ericrice.com Eric Rice

    Heh, yeah ‘behind’ ain’t a big help. Need more people by my *side*, dude. But I appreciate it.

    Maybe this year would be a good year to start a magazine. Heh.

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  • Jacqueline Zenn

    Like I said on Hugh Macleod’s post, I write to build relationships and create value for my readers – and I’m definitely way more focused on communication and the quality of my writing than my stats. After all, I’d rather have a smaller number of readers that engage in conversation or otherwise enjoy my work than a bunch of fleeting eyeballs.

    On a somewhat related note, this is similar to my argument for the fact that search engine optimization is not all that important for most – instead, they should focus on creating value and community first, not on google traffic.

    And when it comes to advertising, the niche thing seems to hold – it has not been that difficult to sell ads on my fashion/style blog (and I’m not exactly Vogue here) because like gadget blogs, those readers are much more likely to click and purchase. The point – some niches are just much more likely to attract advertisers than others.

  • Jacqueline Zenn

    Like I said on Hugh Macleod’s post, I write to build relationships and create value for my readers – and I’m definitely way more focused on communication and the quality of my writing than my stats. After all, I’d rather have a smaller number of readers that engage in conversation or otherwise enjoy my work than a bunch of fleeting eyeballs.

    On a somewhat related note, this is similar to my argument for the fact that search engine optimization is not all that important for most – instead, they should focus on creating value and community first, not on google traffic.

    And when it comes to advertising, the niche thing seems to hold – it has not been that difficult to sell ads on my fashion/style blog (and I’m not exactly Vogue here) because like gadget blogs, those readers are much more likely to click and purchase. The point – some niches are just much more likely to attract advertisers than others.

  • http://www.redplum.com/ Brian

    I don’t think this is a “blogtopian” view it all. In many ways it’s the essence of smart advertising. Size is a factor for truly mass market products, but more important to brands is really the ability to target to the right people (at the right time). If I’m selling dog food, I want to reach dog owners — if you can help me do that efficiently then I’d much prefer using your small niche of dog owners than, say, all of some news site. It’s a smaller, more effective, more engaged audience.

  • http://www.redplum.com/ Brian

    I don’t think this is a “blogtopian” view it all. In many ways it’s the essence of smart advertising. Size is a factor for truly mass market products, but more important to brands is really the ability to target to the right people (at the right time). If I’m selling dog food, I want to reach dog owners — if you can help me do that efficiently then I’d much prefer using your small niche of dog owners than, say, all of some news site. It’s a smaller, more effective, more engaged audience.

  • http://www.redplum.com Brian

    I don’t think this is a “blogtopian” view it all. In many ways it’s the essence of smart advertising. Size is a factor for truly mass market products, but more important to brands is really the ability to target to the right people (at the right time). If I’m selling dog food, I want to reach dog owners — if you can help me do that efficiently then I’d much prefer using your small niche of dog owners than, say, all of some news site. It’s a smaller, more effective, more engaged audience.

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  • http://joeduck.com/ JoeDuck

    Although I agree that there are exceptions to the “audience size” issue, it’s still a good proxy for the value of a site in a given niche. Obviously visits to, say, TechCrunch are worth more to advertisers than visits to Perez Hilton’s site.

  • http://joeduck.com JoeDuck

    Although I agree that there are exceptions to the “audience size” issue, it’s still a good proxy for the value of a site in a given niche. Obviously visits to, say, TechCrunch are worth more to advertisers than visits to Perez Hilton’s site.

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  • http://www.moultygiventofly.com/ Simon

    I agree with the one comment on here that said that blogging was about needing to write something that someone needs to read at one particular moment. It’s not about spikes in readership, its about writing the best thing you can in what ever subject your blog is about.

    I have three on here, giventosound.com and giventoscore.com in addition and whatever the subject, I always write from the heart and advertising or tailoring for sponsorship is not of interest to me.

    If we write it, they will come. Reader spikes are nice but shouldnt be essential.

  • http://www.moultygiventofly.com Simon

    I agree with the one comment on here that said that blogging was about needing to write something that someone needs to read at one particular moment. It’s not about spikes in readership, its about writing the best thing you can in what ever subject your blog is about.

    I have three on here, giventosound.com and giventoscore.com in addition and whatever the subject, I always write from the heart and advertising or tailoring for sponsorship is not of interest to me.

    If we write it, they will come. Reader spikes are nice but shouldnt be essential.

  • http://www.moultygiventofly.com/ Simon

    One other thing, I have no idea who you are, I don’t know if you are a celeb or well known or whatevr and I have never read your blog before, just in case thats important.

  • http://www.moultygiventofly.com Simon

    One other thing, I have no idea who you are, I don’t know if you are a celeb or well known or whatevr and I have never read your blog before, just in case thats important.

  • Christopher Coulter

    Classic cop-out shell-game tricks. When numbers low, claim readership is better, more elite, more important than all the peasantry riff-raff, when numbers high, claim that you were the first to ‘know’ this, everyone else took forever in ‘getting it’, the morons they are. In short: When low, go elite, when high, claim you were the first to know. Can’t ever lose.

    Counterpoints

    1. Exclusive content? Maybe there is a REASON why no one else has that material. Start-up exec’s running at the mouth on a narcissistic-personality-disorder streak isn’t exactly high-dynamic material.

    2. Conversations made up of what? If it’s just the usual blog drama queen conversations, so much the worse, besides that has a shelf life measured in hours. Quality of the conversation is critical, not just marketing-dweeb manipulated into a fake buzz lather. If a poor conversation, next time around people will be that much wiser, not buying into the reindeer games. And if you abuse the product and conversations for so long, no one will listen, crying wolf too many times (i.e. Realplayer and others of that ilk).

    3. Your niche might not be my niche. There is a whole world out there, limiting it to the blog puke or your narrow field of vision, isn’t the all.

    4. Credible and authoritative? Says who? You? Many differing sources of authority, and they can come from unlikely places. And oft times the MOST credible people aren’t even in the limelight glare, you have to hunt them down. Good journalists know that. What’s authority to you, might not be authority to me.

    5. Size always matters, but returns and results do too, i.e. profit margin’s. Basic economics. Things that stay forever niche, are stagnated and eventually salt-poison themselves out. A body of water, needs inputs and outputs, to remain vibrant. And audiences are fickle, one minute you can have an big audience, the next it’s gone. Hoarding all the toys be not “elite”, it’s childish.

    6. If no one listens, that doesn’t make it art. Media empire always should look at audience size, demographics, programming scheduling factors and advertising results. Quality of product is default. Playing the socialist, “art for art’s sake” games, ‘fund me just because’, will doom you to niche, followed by crash and burn. Quality should be assumed, if you even have to ask those questions, it’s not there yet.

  • Christopher Coulter

    Classic cop-out shell-game tricks. When numbers low, claim readership is better, more elite, more important than all the peasantry riff-raff, when numbers high, claim that you were the first to ‘know’ this, everyone else took forever in ‘getting it’, the morons they are. In short: When low, go elite, when high, claim you were the first to know. Can’t ever lose.

    Counterpoints

    1. Exclusive content? Maybe there is a REASON why no one else has that material. Start-up exec’s running at the mouth on a narcissistic-personality-disorder streak isn’t exactly high-dynamic material.

    2. Conversations made up of what? If it’s just the usual blog drama queen conversations, so much the worse, besides that has a shelf life measured in hours. Quality of the conversation is critical, not just marketing-dweeb manipulated into a fake buzz lather. If a poor conversation, next time around people will be that much wiser, not buying into the reindeer games. And if you abuse the product and conversations for so long, no one will listen, crying wolf too many times (i.e. Realplayer and others of that ilk).

    3. Your niche might not be my niche. There is a whole world out there, limiting it to the blog puke or your narrow field of vision, isn’t the all.

    4. Credible and authoritative? Says who? You? Many differing sources of authority, and they can come from unlikely places. And oft times the MOST credible people aren’t even in the limelight glare, you have to hunt them down. Good journalists know that. What’s authority to you, might not be authority to me.

    5. Size always matters, but returns and results do too, i.e. profit margin’s. Basic economics. Things that stay forever niche, are stagnated and eventually salt-poison themselves out. A body of water, needs inputs and outputs, to remain vibrant. And audiences are fickle, one minute you can have an big audience, the next it’s gone. Hoarding all the toys be not “elite”, it’s childish.

    6. If no one listens, that doesn’t make it art. Media empire always should look at audience size, demographics, programming scheduling factors and advertising results. Quality of product is default. Playing the socialist, “art for art’s sake” games, ‘fund me just because’, will doom you to niche, followed by crash and burn. Quality should be assumed, if you even have to ask those questions, it’s not there yet.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Chris, Chris, Chris. You sure are consistent. Glad to see you just make up your own points and don’t really acknowledge mine. That’s cool. I’m used to it with you.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Chris, Chris, Chris. You sure are consistent. Glad to see you just make up your own points and don’t really acknowledge mine. That’s cool. I’m used to it with you.

  • http://scobleizer.com/ Robert Scoble

    Chris, Chris, Chris. You sure are consistent. Glad to see you just make up your own points and don’t really acknowledge mine. That’s cool. I’m used to it with you.

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  • G

    Robert – good post, contrarian, yet very much on point. Your observations are derived from the numbers (hopefully correct in this case). It is interesting that the same people who chase the “Google Ad Dream”, are the same ones who have a hard time digesting the Google numbers. Go figure!

    And where is the Google PR machine in this debate – if there is commentary from Google/YouTube, please point your audience to the their response – or please press them for one!

  • G

    Robert – good post, contrarian, yet very much on point. Your observations are derived from the numbers (hopefully correct in this case). It is interesting that the same people who chase the “Google Ad Dream”, are the same ones who have a hard time digesting the Google numbers. Go figure!

    And where is the Google PR machine in this debate – if there is commentary from Google/YouTube, please point your audience to the their response – or please press them for one!

  • G

    Robert – good post, contrarian, yet very much on point. Your observations are derived from the numbers (hopefully correct in this case). It is interesting that the same people who chase the “Google Ad Dream”, are the same ones who have a hard time digesting the Google numbers. Go figure!

    And where is the Google PR machine in this debate – if there is commentary from Google/YouTube, please point your audience to the their response – or please press them for one!

  • http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/ tish grier

    Hi Robert!

    about 2 years ago, Susan Mernit and I were discussing audience and blog traffic, as I was very worried that my traffic was too low for my blog to ever make a difference…

    Susan said something to me to the effect of that it wasn’t how many people who were reading me, but *who* those people are…

    So, honestly, I may *still* have traffic numbers that make me appear far less than A-list, but, but I know that I’ve got some *fairly* influential readers. The proof has been some really interesting freelance work over the past two years (not to mention my short presentation at Supernova and a few other conferences.) For someone with no formal journalism nor marketing background (unless you count 5 years in retail), I can usually generate one link per post and end up on Techmeme. Not too bad for a low-traffic “nobody” :-)

  • http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/ tish grier

    Hi Robert!

    about 2 years ago, Susan Mernit and I were discussing audience and blog traffic, as I was very worried that my traffic was too low for my blog to ever make a difference…

    Susan said something to me to the effect of that it wasn’t how many people who were reading me, but *who* those people are…

    So, honestly, I may *still* have traffic numbers that make me appear far less than A-list, but, but I know that I’ve got some *fairly* influential readers. The proof has been some really interesting freelance work over the past two years (not to mention my short presentation at Supernova and a few other conferences.) For someone with no formal journalism nor marketing background (unless you count 5 years in retail), I can usually generate one link per post and end up on Techmeme. Not too bad for a low-traffic “nobody” :-)

  • http://spap-oop.blogspot.com tish grier

    Hi Robert!

    about 2 years ago, Susan Mernit and I were discussing audience and blog traffic, as I was very worried that my traffic was too low for my blog to ever make a difference…

    Susan said something to me to the effect of that it wasn’t how many people who were reading me, but *who* those people are…

    So, honestly, I may *still* have traffic numbers that make me appear far less than A-list, but, but I know that I’ve got some *fairly* influential readers. The proof has been some really interesting freelance work over the past two years (not to mention my short presentation at Supernova and a few other conferences.) For someone with no formal journalism nor marketing background (unless you count 5 years in retail), I can usually generate one link per post and end up on Techmeme. Not too bad for a low-traffic “nobody” :-)

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  • http://passthebuck.wordpress.com/ Brian Buck

    I loved this post. I am new to blogging and still am trying to find my voice. Your focus on increasing the art instead of the audience is very inspiring! Thanks.

  • http://passthebuck.wordpress.com/ Brian Buck

    I loved this post. I am new to blogging and still am trying to find my voice. Your focus on increasing the art instead of the audience is very inspiring! Thanks.

  • wannalearnjapanese

    I agree with you on this one Robert. I know I would be happy with a small sized audience that comments regularly. The best blogs to me are the ones where the community gets involved with the blogger.

    PS. Doesn’t everyone know that bashing “The Scobleizer” is the best way to increase your stats… (^_^)/

  • wannalearnjapanese

    I agree with you on this one Robert. I know I would be happy with a small sized audience that comments regularly. The best blogs to me are the ones where the community gets involved with the blogger.

    PS. Doesn’t everyone know that bashing “The Scobleizer” is the best way to increase your stats… (^_^)/

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