The Financial News Shakeout

Some interesting upheaval going on in traffic to online financial news sites. There is a real lead swap underway, with major online properties declining, and new sites and longstanding brands -- FT (PSO) and WSJ (NWS) -- growing smartly. (Click charts to enlarge.)

I know, I know -- Compete data sucks. That said, the trends are what's interesting, which I'm guessing are broadly representative.

Here is another look at same thing, this time via Quantcast, and the trend is a little less obvious, but still there. Mind you, something strange is going on with Marketwatch (NWS) data early on.

Here, courtesy of Matt and the fine folks at Hitwise, is yet more comparative data on what's happened over the last year at some major financial news sites (and at one upstart). Interesting stuff.

Comments

[Lisa:]

The decline in TSCM's traffic is understandable: they launched a redesign which hasn't worked, and as a result they've lost a lot of traffic.

But does anyone know why MarketWatch should have lost so much traffic? Dow Jones/NWS gets lots of positive press on the growth in WSJ.com, but according to these numbers they've lost significantly more from MarketWatch than they've gained from WSJ.com.

2008 Apr 30 02:58 AM

[flatman:]

Speaking of media - is there any way possible to get Chris Regan and Dennis Kneale fired. Without the Fox station from my cable provider, I have to switch to Bloomburg from 11:00 TO 2:00. For what its worth I'm also thinking of cancelling my RealMoney subscription - I fund myself at SeekingAlpha more frequently.

2008 Apr 30 08:35 AM

[De Val Yood...:]

Like The Street, MarketWatch had a bad redesign, too -- certainly cost them a lot of my (former) page views.

2008 Apr 30 02:16 PM