News Aggregator Says Nearly Half of Site's Traffic From Outside the U.S.
By Lukas I. Alpert, The Wall Street Journal
The Huffington Post will launch a Greek edition based in Athens this year in the latest step of a global expansion strategy that the company says has resulted in nearly 50% of the site's traffic now coming from outside the U.S.
The Greek version of the site will go live on Nov. 20 and is one of three new international editions—including HuffPost India and HuffPost Arabic—slated to launch by January 2015. That will bring the total of international sites for the news aggregator to 14 in 10 different languages.
"Ever since we decided to expand globally, I have wanted HuffPost to come to Greece especially given the challenging times Greece has been going through, but we wanted to do it in a way that made sense from a business point of view," said Arianna Huffington, the president and editor in chief of Huffington Post Media Group, who was born in Greece. "For me personally, it's the ultimate homecoming."
The Greek site will be run in collaboration with 24Media, a large digital media company based in Athens.
The Huffington Post, which is owned by AOL Inc., began to expand aggressively overseas in 2011, setting a trend that other online news operations like the MailOnline and BuzzFeed have followed. It began with HuffPost Canada and HuffPost U.K in 2011 and expanding through partnerships into France, Spain and Italy, the following year. In 2013, it created editions for Japan, Germany and North Africa and in 2014 opened Brazilian and Korean pages.
The sites have their own editorial staffs with back office operations like ad sales being handled by the local partners.
Huffington Post CEO Jimmy Maymann said that signs of a turnaround in Greece following its economic collapse that sparked the Eurozone crisis made the country an obvious next step for expansion.
"We've already launched in the five big markets in Europe," he said, adding that "we hope HuffPost can be a platform to start conversations about how to rebuild the economy."
Mr. Maymann said the earliest launched overseas sites in Canada, the United Kingdom and in France have exceeded expectations, delivering more than expected in terms of audience and revenue. He said the Canadian version of the site averages about six million unique views, the U.K site 6.5 million unique views and the French site 4.2 million unique views.
In August, the U.S. version of the Huffington Post had 115 million unique visitors in the U.S., according to research firm comScore Inc., marking the first time the site had crossed the 100 million mark. The site says 49% of its global traffic now comes from outside the U.S. Mr. Maymann said that increased awareness of the Huffington Post stemming from its international expansion had helped boost traffic for the U.S. flagship site.
