The OJD internet, the French system that provides the audience of the web sites connected to the media has just published the figures for July. A brief look at the results is most interesting and quite sobering. Who is the number one? Is it a site linked to an important broadcaster or a prominent newspaper? Forget it. The winner is leboncoin.fr, the French equivalent of Craigslist, set up by the Norwegian media group Schibsted. Leboncoin offers no news and millions of free ads that provide 127 million visits. The number 2 is Skyrock, the provider of zillions of blogs from teenagers. The first newspaper site is number 4 and is managed by l'Equipe, the popular sports daily (65 million visits). Le Monde, our great national newspaper is only number 5 with 44 million visits. Le Figaro is 7.
These data show that even in the fairly restricted field of the media, Internet is far from beeing fully devoted to current affairs. The kind of information you find in a daily or in the various all news brodcasters gets some room on the web but it's still a limited space. However, advertising is everywhere, including on websites which have no connexion whatsoever with any kind of information. The advertising departments of the main media groups find it hard to cope with this new reality.
