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Is TheWrap Challenging b2b Biggies?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Steve Smith

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Upstart Hollywood business site TheWrap is crowing that its traffic is starting to rival traditional print brands Variety.com and HollywoodReporter.com in online reach. Well, maybe. TheWrap was founded earlier this year by former NY Times entertainment journalist Sharon Waxman, and her inside connections helped the site gain credibility and attention in the industry within weeks of its launch. The company reports that its June traffic topped 380,000 unique visitors and 1.8 million page views and compared its Google Analytics metrics against the (fairly incomparable) comScore data that pegs typical Variety.com traffic at 546,000 monthly unique and HollywoodReporter.com traffic at 266,000 uniques. Actually, TheWrap’s standing against the endemic leaders remains to be seen when comScore starts indexing the new b2b entry since Google metrics and comScore metrics generally disagree wildly. For instance, our Digital Box Scores data for HollywoodReporter.com (sourced to Nielsen) shows the site consistently attracting between 1.5 and 2 million uniques. TheWrap may be a worthy competitor, but it is not in league with the majors quite yet.

Which is not to say that TheWrap isn’t an object lesson in fast b2b brand-building online. The site quickly became a must-read in the industry as Waxman and her crew of bloggers broke news such as the salaries of William Morris agents and details about Michael Jackson’s last concert rehearsal. The site demonstrates the low barriers to entry that the Web creates even in the b2b publishing space. Individual journalists with connections and industry credibility can craft new brands and staff around themselves in a matter of months and can use the search-driven Web news eco-system to drive audience. With many unpaid blogger/columnists filling the content wells, a site like this can keep overhead low and exploit the scoops when they occur.

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