Digiday published “Who’s winning at business news on the web” which details traffic, demographics, and ad rates of the five biggest business sites (in ascending order): The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business, Forbes, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance. Business Insider made the largest jump, growing 80% traffic in one year to 40.8 million unique visitors per month. I’m in awe. And a little concerned. If BI were to grow another 80% this year, they would reach 73.44 million unique visitors per month.  Are there that many “insiders” in business?

Let’s look at the demographics and make one very broad – and non controversial – assumption: B2B marketers want senior-level buyers with a minimum $100K household income. None of the Top 5 business sites has a majority of readers over that threshold. BI’s audience had the lowest percentage at 37.4%. This means that 62.6%, or 25.5 million BI readers, fall outside of the sought-after B2B audience demographic.

Breaking Media runs independent brands exclusively focused in seven industry verticals. Our growth targets are tied to market penetration, not total uniques. The result is a smaller audience, but one that closely aligns with the community it serves.  Dealbreaker, Breaking Media’s financial site, is for investment bankers and hedge fund managers. Therefore the 73% of the audience is over $100K. In fact, 38% of the audience have a HHI over $250K.

We believe this niche media strategy best serves our advertisers.

Hsiaolei (pronounced “Chalet”) develops business and can be reached here.