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PRESS RELEASE - VeloNews.com has record-breaking July
VeloNews.com breaks two records in JulyBoulder, CO - It was bound to happen eventually, but no one atVeloNews.com thought it would happen this soon: For the month of July,VeloNews.com not only recorded its first 1 million+ unique visitor
month, but the site's advertising billings topped those of a printedition of VeloNews for the first time.During a month largely driven by Tour de France traffic, VeloNews.comrecorded some 1.1 million unique visitors, up 27% from the 860,000 uniqueslast July, and delivered 26 million page views -- up 24% from the 21 millionpage views delivered in July 2004.Leveraging that huge traffic, advertising revenue hit an all-time high,billing more dollars than issue #13, the print edition of VeloNewswhich billed at approximately the same time. Not only did the site seta new record for advertising revenue, but VeloNews.com has never out-billedan equivalent print issue before.And traffic into August has continued to hit record levels.Year-to-date,VeloNews.com has logged over 50 million page views to a monthly average406,000 unique visitors, and is well on its way to 70 million page views for the year.The unprecedented Tour de France traffic was driven by content unique to VeloNews.com, which was managed and coordinated by news editor Charles Pelkey, who also directed the site's live minute-by-minute coverage. VeloNews.com was the only U.S. site with same-day video highlights of each stage, which were available free of charge to viewers thanks to a sponsorship by EAS Sports. On peak days in the Alps and Pyrenees, more than 21,000 separate Tour fans downloaded Tour highlight video.Additional exclusives included pre- and post-stage commentary from Editorial Director John Wilcockson, along with post-stage wrap-ups, Tour gossip and analysis from VeloNews European Correspondent Andrew Hood and reporters Rupert Guinness, Sebastian Moll, Neal Rogers and Nate Vinton. Exclusive rider diaries featured the work of Jan Ullrich and Magnus Backstedt. VeloNews senior technical writer Lennard Zinn added detailed coverage for the Tech Talk section. And a daily photo gallery featured exclusive photos from Graham Watson and Casey B. Gibson.Explained interactive brand manager Greg Thomas, "VeloNews.com hit onall cylinders this July. We upgraded to one of the world's fastest serverfarms to handle 100mb traffic spikes, sold out the site ad wise, deliveredexclusive Tour video highlights on demand and had our largest-ever crewof contributors reporting daily. The result was monster traffic and somevery pleased visitors and advertisers."Added VeloNews advertising director Steve Brawley, "Unlike some othermagazine sites, advertising on VeloNews.com is not thrown in to a printschedule as 'added value.' The site stands on its own thanks to its hightraffic and superb results for advertisers, 90% of whom are repeat customersyear-to-year due to the great response they get from our viewers."Launched in June, 1994 VeloNews.com is now the oldest sports magazineinternet site. Drawing on advertising, subscription and e-commerce revenue,the site is regarded within the magazine publishing business as one ofthe few successful Web extensions of a print brand.
For more information, please contact:
Steve Brawley, Advertising Director, VeloNews 303.245.2140 orsbrawley@insideinc.com
Charles Pelkey, news editor, VeloNews.com 303.245.2135 or cpelkey@insideinc.com
