By Bob West
I think we’re finally to the point where we don’t have to keep providing digital audience metrics to convince marketers that the agricultural and horticultural audiences Meister Media serves really do use the Internet for work. (Some of you may laugh – you have no idea how many doubters we faced even just a couple of years ago!)
Our eight branded websites combined to deliver an average of 650,000 monthly pageviews through the first half of 2015 – roughly 15% growth from the first half of 2014. I understand if your first thought is, “Well, that’s good growth, but those aren’t really huge traffic numbers.” That’s true, if you’re comparing our sites to Yahoo or even some ag websites targeting the much larger universe of corn, wheat and soybean growers.
The key to online advertising is reaching the largest number of the right eyeballs, and engaging them somehow. That’s where websites like CropLife.com or CottonGrower.com with their niche but high-value audiences provide huge marketing power.
And, as noted previously, the real key is finding an engaged audience, which is where targeted websites really shine. For example, our eight websites delivered nearly 19 million ad impressions in the first six months of 2015, which resulted in more than 46,000 click-through visits to advertisers’ websites. Ad-serving firm Pointroll reports that a benchmark click-through rate (CTR) of 0.10% for all B2B web ads across the Internet, so our average CTR of 0.24% really illustrates the value of delivering ads to the right people
Here’s a look at the growth in Meister Media’s website audiences from the first half of 2014 to the first half of 2015:
| Brand | 2015 Monthly Website Pageviews | % Growth from 2014 |
| Farm Chemicals International | 31,008 | 72% |
| Productores de Hortalizas | 125,945 | 41% |
| CropLife | 106,557 | 28% |
| American Fruit Grower |
128,164 |
28% |
| American Vegetable Grower | ||
| Florida Grower | ||
| Precision Ag | 35,024 | 10% |
| Cotton Grower | 17,955 | 6% |
| Greenhouse Grower | 162,191 | (6%) |
| Today’s Garden Center | 63,579 | (10%) |
Bob West is the Director of Interactive Sales for Meister Media. For more information on these audience trends or to discuss how Meister can help your company’s digital marketing efforts, contact him at 440/602-9129 or [email protected].