Forbes.com: Is it still the biggest and baddest on the Web?

Forbes.com: Is it still the biggest and baddest on the Web?
By Peter Edmonston
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 28, 2006


If Forbes.com was looking to create some Internet buzz last week, it succeeded.

The Web site published an article called "Don't Marry Career Women," which suggested that if a man did, he was more likely to be cheated on, get divorced and have a dirty house than if he did not.

Responses on the Web were swift, with many blogs and sites like Salon.com attacking the posting as a sexist throwback. Forbes.com temporarily withdrew the article and later paired it with an opposing view titled "Don't Marry a Lazy Man."

Forbes.com, the online sibling of Forbes magazine and part of Forbes Inc., is more accustomed to delivering the news than being the news. And despite last week's dust-up, it is adept at it. Even as Forbes magazine has declined in advertising in the past few years, Forbes.com has thrived.

Its own ads proclaim that "more people get their business news from Forbes.com than any other source in the world," saying that its sites drew about 15 million unique visitors in a single month this year. It was a well-heeled crowd, according to Forbes.com, which says the average household income of its users is $149,601.

Forbes's Web prowess is a big reason that Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that counts Bono, the singer and social campaigner, among its managing directors, agreed Aug. 4 to buy a minority stake in Forbes's publishing business.

"Forbes has already won the first round" in the battle for Internet supremacy, an Elevation founder, Roger McNamee, said then.

But a closer look at the numbers raises questions about Forbes.com's industry- leading success. For its claim of a worldwide audience of 15.3 million, it has been citing February data from comScore Media Metrix, one of the two leading providers of third-party Web traffic data.

There are problems with that statistic, though, and comScore has revised the figure to less than 13.2 million as part of a broader revamping of its worldwide data for many sites. Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore, said the new figures were released "a couple of months ago" after it had changed its methods for estimating global audiences.

There is also the question, given Forbes.com's user figures, of where those visitors were going. According to comScore, 45 percent of its February traffic went to ForbesAutos.com, a companion Web site heavy on car reviews and photos. About three-quarters of the ForbesAutos.com traffic came from outside the United States.

Since February, comScore said, Forbes.com's traffic has tumbled. In July, Forbes Web sites drew 7.3 million unique visitors worldwide, almost a million of whom went to ForbesAutos.

That put Forbes.com slightly below Dow Jones, whose online properties include The Wall Street Journal's Web site and MarketWatch; CNNMoney.com, which includes the sites of Fortune and Business 2.0 magazines; and sites affiliated with Reuters, each of which comScore says had about 7.6 million visitors that month.

James Spanfeller, chief executive of Forbes.com, is not backing away from the contention that Forbes.com is No. 1 in its field. "Are we leading the pack?" Spanfeller said in an interview Friday. "Yes."

Asked why, as recently as last week, Forbes.com continued to cite comScore's discarded figure of 15.3 million on its Web site, Spanfeller said that the company had only learned of comScore's new, lower number when informed of it by a reporter. He also said the usage statistics for many of its rivals had been lowered as well, some by larger percentages than that for Forbes.com.

What about comScore's July figure of 7.3 million, which is less than half what Forbes.com has been using? Spanfeller said comScore's latest figures clashed with the company's internal data, which still showed about 15 million visitors a month, with which ForbesAutos.com accounting for about two million.

Still, Spanfeller, who is also chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade association for online media, conceded that the proliferation of Web traffic statistics could be confusing and that the industry had to deal with that issue.

Faith in such data has also suffered as a result of recent restatements by the large Web-tracking businesses. Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore's main competitor, recently reduced its April numbers for Entrepreneur.com to about two million visitors from a previously reported 7.6 million. The company said it had made the change to remove Entrepreneur.com pages that popped up without the user's requesting them.

The Forbes site's assertions that it is top dog irk its competitors. "Forbes.com is not the biggest," Vivek Shah, president of digital publishing for Time Inc.'s business and finance network, said in an e-mail message Friday.

His comment was seconded by L. Gordon Crovitz, publisher of The Journal and executive vice president of Dow Jones, who is responsible for Dow Jones's consumer brands, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch. Both Shah and Crovitz pointed to figures from Nielsen/NetRatings, which they say undercut those from Forbes.com.

Nielsen/NetRatings' latest audience figures in the United States - Nielsen does not provide worldwide figures - show Forbes.com with less than 6.6 million unique visitors in July, putting it below both Dow Jones, at about 7.8 million, and CNNMoney, at about 8.5 million.

The largest business site was Yahoo Finance, with 12.2 million visitors, although other financial sites often choose not to compare themselves with large portals.

The debate is more than just a numbers game. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the Forbes site attracted almost $55 million in revenue in 2005, the most among business publications, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and the business pages of The New York Times.

Some competitors argue that Forbes.com's popularity derives in part from racy, provocative or wealth-obsessed lifestyle features that have little to do with traditional business news - examples from this year include "The Hottest Billionaire Heiresses," "Top Topless Beaches" and "America's Drunkest Cities." Those kinds of articles, unlikely to appear in Forbes magazine, may be a small fraction of those that Forbes.com posts each day, but they are often featured on mass-market Web portals.


If Forbes.com was looking to create some Internet buzz last week, it succeeded.

The Web site published an article called "Don't Marry Career Women," which suggested that if a man did, he was more likely to be cheated on, get divorced and have a dirty house than if he did not.

Responses on the Web were swift, with many blogs and sites like Salon.com attacking the posting as a sexist throwback. Forbes.com temporarily withdrew the article and later paired it with an opposing view titled "Don't Marry a Lazy Man."

Forbes.com, the online sibling of Forbes magazine and part of Forbes Inc., is more accustomed to delivering the news than being the news. And despite last week's dust-up, it is adept at it. Even as Forbes magazine has declined in advertising in the past few years, Forbes.com has thrived.

Its own ads proclaim that "more people get their business news from Forbes.com than any other source in the world," saying that its sites drew about 15 million unique visitors in a single month this year. It was a well-heeled crowd, according to Forbes.com, which says the average household income of its users is $149,601.

Forbes's Web prowess is a big reason that Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that counts Bono, the singer and social campaigner, among its managing directors, agreed Aug. 4 to buy a minority stake in Forbes's publishing business.

"Forbes has already won the first round" in the battle for Internet supremacy, an Elevation founder, Roger McNamee, said then.

But a closer look at the numbers raises questions about Forbes.com's industry- leading success. For its claim of a worldwide audience of 15.3 million, it has been citing February data from comScore Media Metrix, one of the two leading providers of third-party Web traffic data.

There are problems with that statistic, though, and comScore has revised the figure to less than 13.2 million as part of a broader revamping of its worldwide data for many sites. Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore, said the new figures were released "a couple of months ago" after it had changed its methods for estimating global audiences.

There is also the question, given Forbes.com's user figures, of where those visitors were going. According to comScore, 45 percent of its February traffic went to ForbesAutos.com, a companion Web site heavy on car reviews and photos. About three-quarters of the ForbesAutos.com traffic came from outside the United States.

Since February, comScore said, Forbes.com's traffic has tumbled. In July, Forbes Web sites drew 7.3 million unique visitors worldwide, almost a million of whom went to ForbesAutos.

That put Forbes.com slightly below Dow Jones, whose online properties include The Wall Street Journal's Web site and MarketWatch; CNNMoney.com, which includes the sites of Fortune and Business 2.0 magazines; and sites affiliated with Reuters, each of which comScore says had about 7.6 million visitors that month.

James Spanfeller, chief executive of Forbes.com, is not backing away from the contention that Forbes.com is No. 1 in its field. "Are we leading the pack?" Spanfeller said in an interview Friday. "Yes."

Asked why, as recently as last week, Forbes.com continued to cite comScore's discarded figure of 15.3 million on its Web site, Spanfeller said that the company had only learned of comScore's new, lower number when informed of it by a reporter. He also said the usage statistics for many of its rivals had been lowered as well, some by larger percentages than that for Forbes.com.

What about comScore's July figure of 7.3 million, which is less than half what Forbes.com has been using? Spanfeller said comScore's latest figures clashed with the company's internal data, which still showed about 15 million visitors a month, with which ForbesAutos.com accounting for about two million.

Still, Spanfeller, who is also chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade association for online media, conceded that the proliferation of Web traffic statistics could be confusing and that the industry had to deal with that issue.

Faith in such data has also suffered as a result of recent restatements by the large Web-tracking businesses. Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore's main competitor, recently reduced its April numbers for Entrepreneur.com to about two million visitors from a previously reported 7.6 million. The company said it had made the change to remove Entrepreneur.com pages that popped up without the user's requesting them.

The Forbes site's assertions that it is top dog irk its competitors. "Forbes.com is not the biggest," Vivek Shah, president of digital publishing for Time Inc.'s business and finance network, said in an e-mail message Friday.

His comment was seconded by L. Gordon Crovitz, publisher of The Journal and executive vice president of Dow Jones, who is responsible for Dow Jones's consumer brands, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's and MarketWatch. Both Shah and Crovitz pointed to figures from Nielsen/NetRatings, which they say undercut those from Forbes.com.

Nielsen/NetRatings' latest audience figures in the United States - Nielsen does not provide worldwide figures - show Forbes.com with less than 6.6 million unique visitors in July, putting it below both Dow Jones, at about 7.8 million, and CNNMoney, at about 8.5 million.

The largest business site was Yahoo Finance, with 12.2 million visitors, although other financial sites often choose not to compare themselves with large portals.

The debate is more than just a numbers game. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, the Forbes site attracted almost $55 million in revenue in 2005, the most among business publications, including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and the business pages of The New York Times.

Some competitors argue that Forbes.com's popularity derives in part from racy, provocative or wealth-obsessed lifestyle features that have little to do with traditional business news - examples from this year include "The Hottest Billionaire Heiresses," "Top Topless Beaches" and "America's Drunkest Cities." Those kinds of articles, unlikely to appear in Forbes magazine, may be a small fraction of those that Forbes.com posts each day, but they are often featured on mass-market Web portals.