I spend a fair amount of time writing about the Penske Media Corporation-owned Hollywood trade outlets because of the out-sized influence they have in the industry.
PMC just doesn't own The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, TV Line and Indiewire, but the music industry trades Billboard, Rolling Stone. It's a privately-held company, so it can be challenging to determine just how the overall company is doing financially. Although like most media companies, there have been several rounds of small-ish layoffs over the past year.
But there are some ways of looking at slices of the PMC business. Such as using search engine optimization software to look at which stories or search keywords are actually driving traffic.
For instance, let's look at Google search traffic. According to SERanking, here are five keywords that brought the most traffic from the U.S. from Google to Indiewire over the past few days:
1) Sexiest Movies
2) Hulu
3) Sexy Movie
4) Kate Winslet
5) Indiewire
That might seem like a fairly unlikely list of keywords. But it makes more sense when you match the keywords to the url searching for that term sent visitors to on Indiewire:
1) Sexiest Movies
"The 11 Sexiest Movies Of 2024 (So Far)
2) Hulu
3) Sexy Movie
The 53 Best Sexy Movies of the 21st Century, from ‘Spring Breakers’ to ‘X’
4) Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet Burns It Down in Australian Haute Couture Revenge Movie ‘The Dressmaker’
5) Indiewire
Looking at that list, you might think, "You know, Indiewire can read all over the map sometimes. I bet not all PMC trade properties derive so much traffic from sex-infused non-news stories!. So let's take a look at Variety:
1) Amazon
2) What To Watch
What To Watch
(this page is interesting because despite the title, it's a long page full of links to trailer for various streaming movies)
3) Skibidi Toilet
‘Skibidi Toilet’ Film and TV Franchise in the Works From Michael Bay, Adam Goodman — Listen to the Exclusive Interview
4) Sydney Sweeney
Sydney Sweeney
(and this page is a short bio page for the actress)
5) Amazon Prime
The Amazon keywords confused me for a bit and I originally attributed it to Variety's coverage of Amazon and Amazon Prime. And that seems to be part of it. But it also seems to be connected to a knockoff online electronics site named Amazon Variety.
How about Deadline?:
1) Deadline
2) Movie
Venice Film Festival 2024: All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews
(this is a page aggregating all of the staff's movie reviews from the Venice
3) Deadline Hollywood
4) Harry Potter And Film
All The Harry Potter Movies In Chronological Order: From ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ To ‘Deathly Hallows’ To ‘Fantastic Beasts’
5) ESPN Layoff
ESPN Layoffs: Here’s Updated The List Of On-Air Talent Who Were Let Go
So, let's do one more. The Hollywood Reporter:
1) Sydney Sweeney
Sydney Sweeney on Fame, Hollywood Fakery and the Pressure of Paying the Bills
2) Suits Actor
The Cast Of 'Suits,' Then & Now
3) Netflix
Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton Morgan to Star in ‘One Tree Hill’ Sequel in the Works at Netflix
‘Dead Boy Detectives’ Canceled After Single Season at Netflix
4) Talk To Me Movie
‘Talk To Me’ Filmmakers on Their Breakout Horror Hit and the Prequel They’ve Already Shot
5) Hollywood Reporter
Now it's worth noting that since this data comes from the Google Search side of the transaction, as well as from some outside third-party data miners, it might not match exactly with what Penske Media can see on its internal logs. But my experience is that overall, the data is pretty close.
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