Towleroad visitor numbers make the site “with homosexual tendencies” one of the most consulted sources for gay men. With 3.5 million unique users last year — 500,000 in January ’07 alone — broad recognition of its key-site status for both political and entertainment stories, Towleroad clearly has many choices for expansion. As advertisers are increasingly interested Site founder Andy Towle, reveals a partnership to “combine efforts” wtih Out-magazine founder and former MSN general manager, Michael Goff, that has been operating in “stealth mode” for six months.
New York, NY (PRWEB) January 31, 2007 — Towleroad premium gay news for gay men (http://www.towleroad.com) attracted more than 3.5 million unique visitors in 2006, will hit 500,000 unique visitors for January, and served more than 20 million pageviews last year to its site “with homosexual tendencies.” Founder Andy Towle thanked the growing Towleroad community and invited their participation in further growth.
Towleroad grew organically through daily coverage of news, political, cultural and entertainment stories mixed up with photos of attractive guys in the news. Again in 2006 a few of the year’s biggest stories were initially reported by gay bloggers, and went on to on to become major straight-focused media events. Among the highlights, Brokeback, the church and state sex scandals around the election, Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris’s graceful landing with David Burtka after stumbling over a publicist and all the other tales of the celebrity closet, the scariest of course being the hostile homophobic set of Grey’s Anatomy.
Earns Place as a Savvy Must Read :
Towleroad is now part of the daily “must read” for groups of DC politicos, NY media types, Hollywood execs, gay gadget lovers, and others looking for, as blogger PopMuse put it, “the gay news you need.” By year end, many groups recognized Towleroad’s unique role:
–Peer bloggers gave the site a sweep of the Gay Bloggies, 2006 including Weblog of the Year
–The gay press included Towle in both the Out 100 and Advocate year-end issues
–Straight-focused news organizations have made Towleroad one of the relatively few daily contributors to Google News and Topix. Pieces are regularly also featured by by Reuters and internationally.
A Great Word-of-mouth Audience for Entertainment Launches
Somewhere between the comprehensive Brokeback Mountain guide and publishing the first review of Dreamgirls anywhere, the entertainment industry began to recognize Towleroad’s growing audience as well suited to word-of-mouth launches and movie openings. The Dreamgirls distributor followed up Towleroad’s review with a significant ad campaign focused on “opening” the movie, targeting Towleroad’s brand aware, media savvy guys who care about and what to know what’s new and what’s opening across the board.
Attractive Demographic. Extraordinary Cross Readership
New numbers from Quantcast.com** put Towleroad in the top 2-3,000 sites globally ranked by on unique visitors and show attractive demographics for marketers across the board. (http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com). The site shows higher than average participation in the 25-34 range and significantly higher in the primo advertiser target 18-24 year old males; Presumably, it’s the slightly older respondents that index Towleroad very high for post-graduate education and household incomes greater than $100,000+. The site has significant readership overlap with Wonkette (100-times as likely to read), Daily Kos (70 times), (New Yorker 45 times), as well as rollingstone.com, ew.com, style.com, and pinkisthenewblog.com (300 times as likely).
High Profile Ads
Working with key partners Blogads and FeedBurner among others, Towleroad has recently carried ads from AOL, Discovery Card, Nikon, Best Buy, EMI music, New York Times, RIM Blackberry, Bahamas Tourism, and Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage among others. Good results and the research numbers make significant campaigns more likely.
Partnership to Expand
“I am humbled by the positive response and great feedback Towleroad has received this year and am thrilled to announce a partnership with Michael Goff that will facilitate Towleroad’s growth into new areas. As OUT magazine founder and former general manager of Microsoft’s MSN, Michael has been an editor and an entrepreneur many times over and brings a wealth of experience in both gay media and Internet properties.”
Goff said of the just announced partnership, “I couldn’t feel more privileged to be working with Andy. Andy has single-handedly taken Towleroad to incredible heights, maintaining a quality aesthetic and robust content with frequent surprises. Most importantly he’s kept focused on his readers needs by tapping his past experience as a professional photographer, national magazine editor and published poet. He’s set a high bar for us and we’re taking that seriously as we combine our efforts and reach out to other bloggers, journalists, and business people to collaborate.”
The two have know each other for a number of years, and began collaborating mid-year on new projects while expanding business components of Towleroad and broadening the site’s offerings with the already popular TowleTech and Guide to the Tube regular features.
More on Towleroad founder Andy Towle.
More on entrepreneur Michael Goff.
The two with their small team will launch their first new project in the coming weeks.
**NOTE: Because Towleroad is (proudly) hosted at TypePad, it is reachable at towleroad.typepad.com as well, If using Quantcast.com (or Alexa or others) be sure to combine the two results. On Quantcast, combine numbers from the core site at http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.com with numbers from http://www.quantcast.com/towleroad.typepad.com