This entry was posted on
Monday, April 14th, 2008 at
9:47 am and is filed
under The Political Weblog Movement.
You may recall that, during a discussion about Paul Staines’ and Iain Dale’s confusion over the difference between a ‘visit and a ‘visitor’ and how this impacted on MessageSpace’s traffic claims, that Mr Kelly Nightingale, Managing Director of MessageSpace appeared to be a little bit confused… about the difference between a ‘visit and a ‘visitor’.
We didn’t hear from Kelly Nightingale again, but Mr Jag Singh, Chief Information Officer for MessageSpace, did eventually come around (in another thread, mind) and explain that it was ‘mistake’ and that he would “make sure MessageSpace is more careful to recognise the distinction in the future”
That was over a week ago. Welcome to the future…
I had planned to reveal some sums this morning, showing where MessageSpace’s claim that they reach “more than 700,000 readers” each month might not add up, but – after a healthy start – MessageSpace suddenly stopped cooperating. The last I heard from them (after their kind provision of a list of publishers* as at May 2007, when they claimed to have taken their last sample ‘proving’ this) was when I asked for a current list of publishers on Friday afternoon.
[*Publishers = sites carrying MessageSpace advertising. Not all of these are blogs, despite what MessageSpace’s advertising might suggest.]
The sticking point appears to be the inclusion of the popular website Popbitch in the claims of regular/current reach, when in fact Popbitch does not carry MessageSpace advertising regularly or currently, but only occasionally. And one of the few occasions when Popbitch just happened to be running MessageSpace ads was… yep, you guessed it; during the two-week sample taken in May 2007. This is kind of like a kid with height issues who insists that you measure him while he’s on the trampoline; “Measure me NOW… no, wait (boing) measure me NOW… no, wait (boing) measure me NOW… no, wait (boing)…”
But I did find a few interesting nuggets while visiting the website of the company with “nothing to hide” in search of something that might tell me how many publishers they have at the moment and who those publishers might be. I may as well share them with you while we wait for MessageSpace to come around once more…
The first thing I noticed was that – since the discussion(s) linked above (i.e. within the last week) – the MessageSpace website had been updated.
This page used to claim that:
“Publishers on the MessageSpace network show 4 million adverts a month, to more than 700,000 unique readers.”
It now claims that:
“Publishers on the MessageSpace network show more than 9 million adverts a month, to more than 700,000 readers.”
The only way is up, baby.
Still, a ray of hope. Perhaps the page designed to show the current list of publishers (which has been blank for well over a year) had also been updated…
*sigh*
Anyway, while poking around the archived version of the site, I also noticed that they were claiming to reach more than 700,000 readers per month before their May 2007 sample.
Check out this page, captured on March 14 2007
So now, if I’m to do the sums properly, I need data relating to any sample(s) taken before May 2007, as well as the current list of publishers.
*deeper sigh*
But here’s the really fun bit…
If you visit the main page of the MessageSpace website and click ‘partners’, you can see for yourself what they’re currently claiming on their recently-updated website:
A claim of 4 million readers per month. On the front page of their website. So much for their being more careful in future…
