In Forbes today, Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck noted that XM's website peaked around Father's Day at levels "significantly higher" than average, indicating a possible increase in interest around the holiday. By contrast, Sirius Satellite Radio's traffic stayed within the average range - spiking after Father's Day.
Curious. This peaked my interest. So I embarked onto good ol' Alexa to get a clearer picture:
Here's the Alexa graph showing the past month's worth of reach trending. I say "trending" because Alexa is great to determine exactly that - it's not an absolute measurement. Anyway.
So xmradio.com saw a significant spike in traffic just before Father's Day, yet sirius.com saw a spike after Father's Day. This could be translated in different ways as the post-Father's Day traffic could very well be from online activations (a good sign for Sirius). While the pre-Father's Day traffic for XM could be an indication that their TV spot made a difference. Ohh the speculation.
Whatever the causes, I'm pretty much convinced that the post-Father's Day traffic is from activations or from new subscribers checking out the service. Good news since this period is so important for consumer electronics sales.
But there's one thing that doesn't add up... Stern started streaming just before Father's Day.
"But there's one thing that doesn't add up... Stern started streaming just before Father's Day."
Nobody cares about Howard anymore. Out of ear, out of mind. Booo Hoo Hoo
I wouldn't give too much thought to the fact that Stern started streaming just before Father's Day. That was unanticipated and it happened in the middle of a work day. And, unless someone was already paying close attention to Sirius but had not either tried it before or did not yet own a radio, they were unlikely to have tried it on that specific day, as they were likely unaware or unable to try it.
I don't know if it matters but Howardstern.com also directly linked to the Sirius streamer.
The official announcement was also made on 6/19. Thats probably why the spike happened after father's day.
I found out about it on before the announcent because I read about it here.
Didn't XM mass email all their subscribers right before Father's Day? I would think a number of those that opened the XM email went to the site.
On Sirius, you still have to be a Sirius hardware subscriber to get Howard online. I believe there would be no dramatic increase on Sirius.com for Howard streaming due to no online only subs (yet). Just typing out loud.
Ryan,
Please reverse the colors on the next Alexa graph posting. You confuse me when Sirius is red and XM is blue. lol.
Nobody cares about old Hoo Hoo anymore. Its all of the boys O and A now. Free FM and XM rule and sirius sucks. Why even bother posting Sirius news here since nobody cares about it.
The Reach chart is the wrong place to look for the effects of Stern streaming. Reach measures unique visitors to the site, so it goes up when people visit the site who don't already visit it regularly. It may be relevant when looking for potential consumer interest or newly activated subscriptions; populations you'd expect to be new to the site.
Stern streaming is only available to existing subscribers. The people this affects are already Stern fans who may visit Howard's pages on the site for schedules and updates, and are also prone to use streaming so probably already use it for streaming music. The place you want to look here is Page Views, because you would expect with Howard streaming that these existing site visitors will be more active on the site:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=medium&compare_sites=xmradio.com&y=p&url=sirius.com
We do in fact see a considerable spike in Page Views during the two weeks of Stern streaming, both over recent history and in comparision to XM. This is while the stream is in Beta and has yet to be officially press released, although it has been mentioned on the show and Howardstern.com, so it may spike more when the official version of the stream is released.