Did you draft Adrian Peterson with the first pick or did you go with Michael Turner instead? That’s right - It’s the time of year to put together the cheat sheets, work through a couple of mock drafts and find the right players to play for you on Sunday and Monday nights. Fantasy football is back and its popularity continues to grow online.

For my analysis, I used category data from compete.com, specifically the Fantasy Sports category. Unique Visitors to the Fantasy Sports category for July has increased 97% Y-O-Y, a big surge when compared to the 5% increase from July 2007 to July 2008. Looking at trends over the last two years, traffic for the Fantasy Sports category peaks during the months of September through December, Fantasy Football season.

Two of the bigger sites that Fantasy players use to manage their leagues are Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and ESPN Fantasy and Games. These sites continue to grow each year:

• fantasysports.yahoo.com had a 9% Y-O-Y Unique Visitors increase
• games.espn.go.com had a 40% Y-O-Y Unique Visitors increase

However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. As you can see in the chart below, those two sites aren’t receiving as much Share of Visits to the Fantasy Sports category as they were two years ago when they captured 79% of the category traffic. Now their combined share is down to just 43% - no longer a duopoly! What could have caused this change? Who is the new kid in town?

Clearly, ESPN’s Streak for the Cash has gotten the attention of some looking to get their daily fix of fantasy fun and information. In one year it has managed to get a 45% share of Visits to the Fantasy Sports category. One way they were able to accomplish this was by differentiating themselves – they attract fantasy players to come back to the site each day to predict winners of matchups and keep their streaks alive - a new twist on an already popular pastime.

So good luck with your picks, and let me know if you have any inside tips to share!

There is buzz in the news about U.S. auto sales numbers having remarkable growth in July.  The “cash for clunkers” government program CARS (Car Allowance Rebate System) most certainly had something to do with that.   The main focus of the government program is to get older vehicles that typically get less than 18 mpg (miles per gallon) off the street, and replace those vehicles with more fuel efficient alternatives by offering a voucher for up to $4,500.In July, not only did people get cash for their clunkers, they also got the most fuel efficiency out of their purchases with the average of all vehicles being 28.3 mpg.  In July, the list of vehicles that topped the list of vehicles sold included Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Prius and Ford Escape.  With so much action on the showroom floors across the U.S., was this program also drawing similar attention online?

According to the data, the answer is yes.  Traffic to the website cars.gov, the official website for the “cash for clunkers” program, saw a M-O-M volume increase of 781% in July, with over 3.3 million Unique Visitors.  As more and more consumers researched cars.gov, the next logical step in investigating the government program was to research cars.  Unique Visitors to the U.S. automaker websites were also on the rise in July.  General Motors (gm.com) lead the way with a 58% M-O-M increase, while Ford (ford.com), Dodge (dodge.com), Jeep (jeep.com) and Chrysler (chrysler.com) had increases of 48%, 38%, 30% and 29%, respectively.

Unique Visitor traffic to Cars.gov and the U.S. Auto Makers

Unique Visitors to foreign automaker websites also increased in July.  Traffic to Hyundai (hyundaiusa.com) increased 35% M-O-M, while Toyota (toyota.com), Honda (automobiles.honda.com), Mazda (mazdausa.com) and Subaru (subaru.com) had increases of 33%, 24%, 24% and 22%, respectively.  Clearly the success of the “cash for clunkers” program has stimulated the demand for both domestic and foreign vehicles.

Unique Visitor traffic to Cars.gov and the Foreign Auto Makers

Today the Senate will vote to extend the “cash for clunkers” program that would add an additional $2 billion to the program and extend it until Labor Day.  If passed, the additional funding for the program will help drive strong U.S. auto sales once again in August.

But that is not the end of the story.  In a future blog we will be taking a deeper look at Compete’s online consumer activity to see which automaker benefited the most from “cash for clunkers” related traffic.  Was this traffic increase aided exclusively by “cash for clunkers”, or were other attractive automaker incentives contributing to the July sales increase.  Stay tuned for part two…

Thinking back to my childhood, a week just wasn’t complete in the Bulger house if my grandmother didn’t get her fill of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was a tradition that she looked forward to all week, yet never once did I see an angry mob of people knocking down a KFC’s door demanding free chicken. However, this past month, when Colonel Sanders and Oprah Winfrey cooked up a little free chicken marketing campaign, a fowl uprising took place.

I first learned about the free Grilled Chicken meal offer from Oprah when I saw both “KFC” and “Oprah” were top trends on Twitter. Upon further investigation, I learned that a page on Oprah’s website was re-directing traffic to KFC’s new microsite for their new Grilled Chicken product, unthinkfc.com. Customers were able to receive their free Grilled Chicken meal via a coupon on unthinkfc.com. Lending a hand in guiding online attention to the free Grilled Chicken meal, coupons.com also played a crucial role in referral traffic to unthinkfc.com. In May, coupons.com referred 34.1% of unthinkfc.com referral traffic; oprah.com was slightly less with 30.2% of unthinkfc.com referral traffic.

In just a short period of time, less than 24 hours, the promotion had received a tremendous amount of attention. The chart below is the Daily Reach for the website unthinkfc.com from May 3 through May 9, the week in which the free offer was made available (the offer was available from 9 a.m. CDT on May 5th, to 11:59 p.m. CDT on May 6th). Daily Reach is a metric that shows how many people visit a website as a percentage of all U.S. Internet users online. So, as depicted in the chart below, on May 6th an astounding 3.73% of the U.S. Internet population visited unthinkfc.com.

The big question is whether this free promotion had a lasting effect for KFC throughout the month of May. According to the graph below, the answer to that question is no. Traffic to kfc.com and unthinkfc.com peaked during the week of the promotion - Unique Visitors were 2.85 million and 8.75 million, respectively. However, following that promotion week, traffic quickly dropped off. Unique Visitors to kfc.com decreased 73% W-O-W and Unique Visitors to unthinkfc.com had a decrease of 98% W-O-W.

“The Oprah Effect” is also clearly visible in the graph below, depicted by the orange bar. In the week of the free offer, 7.95 million Unique Visitors went to the Grilled Chicken coupon landing page on oprah.com. Many of these people were seeking out further information following the mention on her show or those who were following her Twitter feed.

In the end, the massive amount of attention left many coupon holders with an empty feeling in their stomachs. It seems the attention that the free offer received was more than KFC was able to handle. As demand for the free Kentucky Grilled Chicken skyrocketed and supply started running low, many restaurants were forced to say, “free chicken… no clucking way!”

It’s amazing to see how popular sites like twitter.com and coupons.com, combined with “The Oprah Effect” and a struggling economy, created a strong marketing campaign for KFC and the Kentucky Grilled Chicken product. Even in the wake of the free chicken coupon fiasco, KFC has seen overall sales increase; a positive outcome for what is some good grilled chicken. I guess my grandmother was way ahead of this trend!

For the past few years, I have not only been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber, but also one of its biggest fans. Sirius replaced the unmanageable amount of mix CD’s that littered my car and put all the music and entertainment in one small piece of equipment. Sirius has also changed the way I listen to music at work. On in the background all day, Sirius Internet Radio provides me with the soundtrack to my daily life. While some days call for an upbeat tempo with Sirius Hits 1 and some days require a more mellow choice like Cinemagic, my channel of choice is Howard 100. And who can blame me - the home of chaotic entertainment that is amusing day after day, providing everything from the ‘Wack Pack’ to Robin’s News. I wanted to know if others shared in my loyalty to Howard 100 when listening to Sirius Internet Radio, and if not, what are the subscribers listening to?

To do this, I looked at the population of Sirius Internet Radio listeners and then analyzed what channels they are tuning into during a month. Keep in mind that one listener can fall into multiple buckets throughout the month. Here’s what I found:

• Howard is King: 28.4% and 16.1% of Sirius Internet Listeners tune in to Howard 100 and Howard 101, respectively. Just like in his days of old on terrestrial radio, Howard Stern continues to be the most listened to channel.
• Rock and Pop lead in the music categories: Sirius Hits 1 commands the top music channel with 10% of Listeners heading to this channel. However, while people are tuning in to hear the latest pop hits, just as many people are tuning in to listen to the two classic rock channels (Classic Rewind and Classic Vinyl).
• While not on the list here, Sirius NFL Radio does break into the Top 10 listened to channels during the NFL season. 9.3% of Sirius Internet Unique Listeners listened to Sirius NFL Radio in September ‘08. This was #4 overall!
• Online listeners love their caroling: Sirius XM Pops and Cinemagic, two channel dedicated to Holiday music, were in the Top 10 listened to channels in December ‘08. Cinemagic was the 2nd most listened to channel in December ‘08 with 14.2% of Sirius Internet Listeners listening to Holiday music. The top channel was still Howard 100.

With a large percentage of listeners tuning into Howard 100 and Howard 101 on SIRIUS Internet Radio, what will happen to Sirius XM Radio if Stern were to leave at the end of his contract in 2010? Howard Stern commands a large audience, many of which might cancel their service if Stern were to leave at the end of his contract. As Internet Radio continues to grow, Stern’s next move could be to bring his own channel to the World Wide Web. I can see it now, the Stern Internet Radio iPhone app being the biggest app of 2011.

Recently, there was quite some media buzz and chatter amongst the bloggers about Facebook’s updated Terms of Use. This led many Facebook users to question their privacy and rights on the website. Was the effect of these concerns far reaching, or was this simply a case of media hysteria? Let’s begin by looking at a timeline of events.

This latest Facebook saga began on February 4th, when Facebook updated its Terms of Use to state that Facebook was granted licensing rights to content published by its users on the Facebook domain, even in the event of a user deactivating their account. Future politicians of the world trembled at the thought of their past online identity coming back to haunt them: How would they ever explain those college photos displaying them in an inebriated state? By mid-month the story had picked up steam in the wake of media coverage and privacy advocate backlash, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to respond publicly to the growing concerns on February 16th, using the Facebook blog. Two days after his response, Facebook reverted their Terms of Use and once again gave ownership of the published content (all those pictures and videos) back to the Facebook user. To go a step further, on February 26th, Facebook published two new governing documents on Proposed Facebook Principles and Proposed Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. However, as of the end of February, not many people were taking the time to read these proposals – less than 0.2% of the Facebook population.

So, where did the Facebook user fit into this ordeal? Did Joe College or my office cube mate really care? I would say they did.

During the period of time where media coverage was at its height, and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to the growing concerns, Facebook users were taking the time to read the Term’s of Use. In fact, traffic to this part of the site grew 237% W-O-W.

The chart above shows the weekly unique volume of Facebook users reading the Terms of Use. And while the change in Terms occurred in the 2nd week depicted in the chart (2/1-2/7), the spike in volume happened during that third week of February – which makes sense because this is when the media grabbed the story. And I’m willing to bet that anyone reading this blog had at least one friend in their network tweet about this or publish a story on their Facebook wall.

The negativity also seemed, for a short while anyways, to have an ill effect on the number of deactivations of Facebook accounts. Facebook users who began the deactivation process grew 35% W-O-W in this same week in February (2/15 – 2/21) – the week that captured all the buzz. This accounted for 0.5% of all Facebook users, up 30% from the week prior.

After the Terms of Use were restored to the users’ (and media’s) liking, behavior seemed to return to normal. This indicates that while it did attract some attention, this event did not seem to soil either Facebook’s image or its continued growth in the space. When all was said and done: High School kids went on gossiping; College kids went on posting party pics; Mom’s continued stalking their children. All was right in Facebook world.