Jewish Identity on Web

Following “McKinsey Study”

The “McKinsey Study” reveals few interesting facts regarding the Jewish Identity on web these last years. These can help in understanding how to approach the Jewish community worldwide on web. A promising gold mine for marketers .

Search Traffic

Examining volume of searches each month makes search a particularly intriguing way of looking at changes in attention and interest on the Internet over time. The report took broad spectrum of 32 Jewish-related search terms and studied their current traffic volume as well as how that traffic has changed during the past four years (June ’04 – June ’09). The entire sample set saw an average decrease in search traffic of 25 percent, with only a few search terms becoming more popular over the four-year period.
Here are the top five increases and decreases in popularity.

                              Avg. Monthly Volume    Total 4yr Change
Rosh Hashanah               164,774                       49%
Chabad                                218,603                      21%
Challah                                 92,547                       16%
Matzah                                   73,453                       10%
Yom Kippur                          206,091                      9%
Judaica                                 288,552                     -54%
Reform Judaism                 16,185                      -66%
Anti-Semitism                       326,378                    -74%
Jewish Dating                       190,974                    -85%
Kabbalah                                393,361                    -87%

Educational and Information Sites

In the education/information category there are a number of strong sites, with Chabad emerging as a brand leader. Chabad’s main website consistently serves as an example of what a successful educational/informational Web presence can look like.In contrast, the Web presence of other religious movements – Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Judaism – was much poorer, though OU.org does moderately well.

Jewish educational and informational sites are also taking advantage of social media – but none has a more focused brand across social media than Chabad. Chabad has leveraged its international identity in coordination with its local chapters to create a social web experience that is both down on a local level and part of something “larger.” The result is quite compelling.

The News Industry

In the News portion of study, the most instructive section is the traffic and engagement comparison between the websites of the major Israeli papers (Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post) and the American news sources (JTA, The Jewish Journal, The Jewish Week, The Forward, The Jewish Exponent and The Jewish Press). For a website to be self-supporting, the trick is to attract a significant enough share of eyeballs to sell a wide range of ad packages. Jpost.com and haaretz.com have achieved a high level of visitation, but while jta.org and jewishjournal.com lead the American pack. The sum of all the major American Jewish news sites does approach the level of significant traffic reached by the Israeli sites.

                          Unique Visitors
Total U.S.            808,516
Jpost.com        1,454,649
Haaretz.com       691,467

Beyond just site traffic, visitor engagement patterns also suggest the American Jewish news industry is too fragmented on the Internet. Not only do visitors spend significantly more time per visit when perusing the Israeli sites, but many more of those visitors are “regulars” (people who visit more than once per month) and addicts (people who visit more than 30 times per month). In fact, because of this “addict” phenomenon, a quarter of traffic to haaretz.com and jpost.com is generated by just 2 percent of their users. In contrast, only jta.org has any sort of measurable traffic generated by “addicts” – 11 percent.

One of the takeaway point is that the American Jewish media needs to coordinate and combine their assets online. By combining and centralizing the Web presence of many of these brands, the advantages would extend beyond the basic aggregation of their traffic. A centralized U.S.-based news sites would benefit from economies of scale, a greater ability to attract the best talent, and stronger ad sales. A dominant Web brand would also enjoy exponentially increased readership and engagement.

The report takes a business-oriented, top-level look at the Jewish Web using the practices of the renowned consulting firm McKinsey as a guide. This analysis gives better understanding  of business related aspects of Jewish Identity on Web.