Salon Records Big Rise In Ad Revs, Visitors

Despite rampant competition, investments in social and mobile distribution helped Salon Media Group finish 2013 on a high note.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the digital media veteran saw net revenue from continuing operations reach $1.9 million -- up 82% from the same period a year earlier. For the nine months ended Dec. 31, net revenue was $4.6 million, which represented an increase of 70% year-over-year.
 
Ad revenue hit $1.8 million for the three months ended Dec. 31 -- up 80% year-over-year. For the nine-month period, ad revenues were $4.3 million -- an increase of 72% compared to the same period in the prior year.
 
For the quarter’s success, Salon credited its internal sales team, which was responsible for $1.1 million in sales for the three months ended December 31 – up 175% year-over-year.
 
Measured by comScore, Salon’s unique visitors increased 13%, compared to the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2013. Salon also experienced a 60% increase in mobile browser traffic in the December 2013 quarter, compared to the same quarter last year.
 
The company said it continues to see a significant shift to readers accessing Salon from mobile devices, with 48% of users visiting the Salon.com from mobile devices in December.
 
Salon said its traffic has also been fuelled by social-referral traffic, which grew 18% in the December 2013 quarter versus the September 2013 quarter, and 64% compared to the same period in the prior year. Facebook remained Salon’s largest social referral, growing 44% compared to the September 2013 quarter, and 123% versus the December 2012 quarter.
 
The company also saw a doubling of Facebook referrals from September to December 2013, which it attributed partly to its increase in mobile traffic.

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