MediaPost: Media Shops Attract Surprisingly Heavy Web Traffic

A Hitwise ranking of top visited ad agency sites shows some strange traffic patterns. Some agency sites, it seems, benefit from confusing brand names - Modem Media and MediaCom among them - that are likely to tempt web surfers to visit in the false hope they will provide help with certain consumer services. The list, compiled for MediaPost, shows radically distended traffic for some sites and miniscule traffic for some of the industries largest brands, like Ogilvy.

Some of the brand confusion is obvious. For instance, Jon Mandel, co-CEO of MediaCom, said that he personally receives about 50 to 60 emails a week from angry cable company customers who mistake his email address for that of the CEO of Mediacom Communications. MediaPost's editor Joe Mandese speculates about other points of confusion to explain the reasons why some of the other agency brands receive outsized traffic.

The Hitwise list does not show absolute traffic numbers, but rather the relative proportion of traffic each site garners.