Last year NBC Universal touted the purchase of iVillage as the key and center to their Internet strategy. Now that it's been under their umbrella for a time, the rate of growth has been much less than originally anticipated.
At the time of the purchase last year, Beth Comstock said, "We look at iVillage as the centerpiece to our digital strategy. It gives us scale and a platform and a new forum for engaging with consumers and creating a different kind of experience with our content."
Still, expectations so far have been pretty disappointing. Even with heavy promotion via its popular "Today" show, iVillage has had very little growth in monthly unique visitors, which remains at about 15 million. For the month of December traffic decreased by a lot, dropping to 13.5 million unique visitors from Novembers' 14.4 million.
One of the problems is that media companies are still trying to operate with "scale" or mass audiences, as Comstock says, rather than focusing on much narrower topics and interests.
The online trend that will continue is that people want smaller communities that are focused on what they are interested in. Scaling is not important anymore to users, only to marketers.
With the new tools and metrics here and coming down the pipe, it will be easier for marketers to offer their wares not only across different platforms and portals, but through many company Web sites that compete with one another.
I think part of the problem here is that NBC Universal still thinks in terms of scale rather than smaller communities.
Another big problem is that everyone is pretty much starting to enter into this space. Influential competitors like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Meredith, CondeNet and Hearst are all reaching out to the same demographic. It'll become even more fragmented in the times ahead.
One positive thing that has been happening is in reference to their ad revenue, as iVillage has taken in around $40.9 million according to TNS Media Intelligence. For static or display advertising, it is up by 45 percent, while video is growing strong for them.
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt asserted that the web property would grow by 30 percent just about endlessly for years ahead, I think what's being found out is that the fragmentation of the market hasn't even come near to being over.
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