Before the Internet could finish off newspapers, the pillars of the digital age are already suffering their own slide. Portals Yahoo!, MSN and AOL -- for years the largest source of traffic on the web -- are seeing recent dropoffs in visitors, pageviews and, most dramatically, time spent by users.
But unlike slow-to-change print companies, the portals saw this coming -- and are already trying to do something about it by focusing on content creation and its associated "stickiness."
In keynotes, on panels and in the halls at the eighth All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., earlier this month, the consensus was that the portal strategy employed by the big three of AOL, MSN and Yahoo is as good as dead – with Facebook holding the smoking gun.
What's more, portals' push toward original content – Yahoo’s $100 million acquisition of Associated Content, AOL’s declaration that it will be “the largest net hirer of journalists in the world next year” – only underscores how much trouble they’re in.
And the numbers don't lie.
According to Compete.com, AOL had 45.5 million unique visitors last month, down slightly from 47.9 million in May 2009 – and a serious drop-off from January, when it saw 55.8 million. Yahoo, at 134.1 million, was up slightly from May 2009, but MSN (65.6 million) slid 12 percent versus the same month last year.
Page views, meaning the number of pages viewed by each individual user, have fallen significantly for each of the big three: AOL (-32 percent), Yahoo (-28 percent) and MSN (-30 percent) all posted steep declines in May.
But if you’re an AOL or Yahoo! executive, here’s the statistic that is most worrisome: Average time spent on portal websites is down 21.7 percent over the last year, with users spending on average six and a half minutes before scurrying off somewhere else.
“The big word in digital media for the last year has been 'engagement,'” said Betsy Morgan, former chief executive at the Huffington Post, now a senior consultant. “No more 'drive-by' traffic.”
Users spent an average of 4:56 on AOL in May, down from 7:38 a year ago. Yahoo users averaged 7:21 in May versus just over 9 minutes in May 2009. (MSN – at 4:42 – was down just 9 seconds year-over-year, but had been hovering over 5 minutes per session.)
Where were those users spending more time?
According to Compete.com, in May 2009, Facebook users spent an average of 15 minutes on Facebook browsing their Friendfeeds and updating their profiles. In May 2009, they spent 22:39 – an increase of nearly 50 percent.
The time-shift from portals to social media has never been more pronounced.
Another factor in the sinking engagement figures, Compete.com data manager Chris Bulger said, could be the rise of Bing as a search option.
“Some people who relied on the portals for their search became aware of Bing through their marketing," Bulger said, "which cut into the time spent.”
