Vertical Ad Networks Show Increased Reach and Engagement – Comscore Report

Comscore has released another report, this time on the performance of Vertical Ad Networks on the web. As many of you might already know, Vertical Ad Networks are those which target ads to specific audiences online according to demographic or category content. According to the report, the reach of Vertical Ad Networks tracked by comScore has increased from 21.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience in March 2008 to 57.1 percent in March 2009. Basically a 36% increase in the past year.

Interestingly besides the heightened reach, these networks also showed increased engagement on part of the users in their content niches. A total of 5 categories were considered for the study including Gaming, Entertainment, Community, News and Health. As an instance of the engagement metric, according to the report, people reached in the Gaming segment through vertical ad networks spent 423 minutes per visitor on sites in that category, which was 123 percent higher than the average visitor.

Some of the Ad networks covered include Adify Media, Federated Media, Glam Media, Travel Ad Network, etc. It is important to know these because these networks include in their roll some of the top blogs in their respective niches. The fact that they are blogs is the important part here, and gives an idea on how web publishing is changing as well. The higher engagement can also be attributed to the same reason because blogs present a engaging and active community where every visitor gets a chance to contribute and debate and thus be part of the content on the site.

On a general the increased reach of ad networks might also be in part to a lot of websites joining these networks as publishers in the past year compared to before. A reason for this can also be attributed to higher unsold inventories, the ability to drive in higher targeted traffic by being part of a cluster of similar sites. This can be attributed to the dip in direct advertising deals online for many publishers last year.

In India we have seen a lot of vertical networks rise in the past year, and this might be an interesting point for a lot of them to note. It would also be useful if we can compare the reach and engagement of Indian vertical networks in the last year and see if it trended the same way.