a single source, nothing corroborates it

Rank outlets by audience affinity, not by traffic

The site everyone optimises for is rarely the site your buyers trust. Trade publications with modest numbers but very high affinity beat a banner on a giant, and one publisher often owns the web, podcast and video attention of a whole market at once. Put your earned media into that publisher first and let the famous name wait.

The method

1. 01

   Chase the sites with high audience affinity and modest traffic, because a single quote there outperforms a banner on a giant everyone else is optimising for.

2. 02

   Find the one publisher that owns the website, the podcast and the video for your audience, and put your earned media there first.

What it returned

• 77

  EC&M ranked first on the web at 77 affinity, first on podcasts at 97 and near the top on YouTube at 96 for this audience, with T&D World second at 72 and 92, which SparkToro would prioritise over any bigger generalist name.

• SparkToro's hidden gems for this audience were mikeholt.com, tedmag.com, electricaltrends.com and ewweb.com, all influential with the audience and ignored by anyone chasing raw reach.

Sources

• When Your Audience Isn't Who You Think They Are - SparkToroSparkToro · sparktoro.com · Insight #2: The trade press never died here — and one brand owns it · 2026-06-25