CNET Leads Peers in Spend Share and Advertising Volume

Key Takeaways:

• Examining advertising flow and market share on some of the most popular consumer technology sites reveals that cnet.com leads its peers in spend share. Per Sensor Tower’s cohort of consumer technology publishers, CNET boasted 59% of spend share in 1Q24, vs 25% for Engadget and 8% each for Gizmodo and Wired

• CNET and Engadget’s share of total spend across the cohort in 1Q24 was up 7pps and 3pps on a YoY basis, while Gizmodo and Wired saw share of spend fall -6pps and -5pps, respectively. This suggests that advertisers have more heavily leveraged CNET and Engadget to reach consumers compared to Gizmodo and Wired over the course of the past year

• One of the largest verticals by US ad spend for the cohort of consumer technology publishers is the computers & consumer electronics category. Per ST data, this vertical represented the third largest spending vertical on CNET, while it was the fourth largest on both Engadget and Gizmodo and sixth largest on Wired. CNET held the largest share of ad spend in the computers & consumer electronics category at ~75% in 1Q24, compared to 17% for Engadget, 5% for Gizmodo and 3% for Wired

• Best Buy was the largest advertiser from the computers & consumer electronics category on CNET. Best Buy spent 3x, 15x and 15x more advertising on CNET in the US in 1Q24 than it did on Engadget, Gizmodo and Wired, respectively

  • ST data shows that top advertisers within the computers & consumer electronics category, such as Best Buy, have allocated heavier amounts of spend towards social media channels to reach consumers. Although desktop display still made up the majority of Best Buy’s US ad spend (39%) in 1Q24, social channels comprised more than half (~58% combined) of Best Buy’s advertising budget in the quarter, up from roughly 36% in the same quarter in the prior year (1Q23)

For more information, request the full report from reports@sensortower.com.