Intel triples traffic to Web magazine in under a year

You can act like a mutual fund manager, buying and holding your media promotions and hoping for the best. Or, like a day trader, you can shift money rapidly and double down on your high performers.

Intel chose the latter approach for its Web publication iQ, cutting its losses on less-popular content and promoting its best-read stories on channels such as Facebook, Outbrain, LinkedIn, Twitter, Taboola, and Reddit. Rather than reducing its page views, this strategy tripled iQ’s traffic in under a year.

Monthly unique visitors shot up to 657,000 unique visitors in September from 200,000-250,000 a year prior. That means the value of its promotional spending also shot up.

“We’ve seen five to six times the traffic delivered to our website for the same amount of budget,” says Kintigh, who is the semiconductor chipmaker’s global paid media and content strategist.

10 percent of content brings 90 percent of page views

Intel developed its approach after it realized that 10 percent of its content brings 90 percent of the page views. What if it could identify that top content right away, rather than at the end of the week, and reallocate its promotional budget to push the popular stories?