Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic

ABCe success for Dennis Publishing

Stuart Goodwin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:24:24 +0000

Dennis Publishing’s latest Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) figures have been released highlighting a growth in popularity for the publisher’s digital titles.

Dennis’ iGIZMO, which was launched in February, attracted an average of 101,785 unique users per fortnightly issue over the last year, a press release from the group said, while weekly title Monkey recorded 283,541 unique users on average and 1,009,298 for September.

The latest figures show a fourth successive rise in ABCes for Monkey, according to the release.

Fortnightly magazine iMOTOR’s issue average for unique users was 108,622 – 221,739 in September’s figures.

These audits prove that the digital magazine sector is a viable, growing and successful business model. In addition, these titles are really delivering for our advertisers,” said Bruce Sandell, head of NPD at Dennis, in the statement.

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Guardian debuts six-monthly ABCe figures for regional websites

Laura Oliver — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:38:02 +0000

Guardian News and Media (GNM) has become the second publisher to officially sign up for the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic’s (ABCe) six-monthly web traffic audits, according to a release from the bureau.

The new audits will provide detailed daily, weekly and monthly breakdowns of unique user/browser and page impression figures for sites within GNM’s regional portfolio, which have previously reported web traffic stats on an ‘ad hoc’ basis.

Regional GNM sites getreading.co.uk, manchestereveningnews.co.uk and manchesteronline.co.uk , as well as thejobsmine.co.uk will be analysed as part of the new arrangement.

Online traffic data will be presented alongside print circulation figures for the titles, the bureau added.

GNM follows Northcliffe Media, which signed up 10 of its regional websites for the new certificate earlier this month.

In a press statement accompanying the announcement, Northcliffe said it plans to increase the audit to 20 sites by 2009, and to cover ‘all major urban and regional sites’ in the future.

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RMRF: Trinity Mirror Regionals presents user profile survey results

Laura Oliver — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:58:58 +0000

In a follow up to Tuesday’s announcement that the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) will provide user profiles alongside stats on page impressions and unique users, Guy Lipscombe, managing director of Survey Interactive – the firm behind the on-site surveys being used for the research – explained how the ‘enhanced ABCe certificates’ would work at yesterday’s Regional Media Research Forum (RMRF) event:

Lipscombe was joined by Sally O’Donnell, strategic marketing manager for Trinity Mirror Regionals (TMR), who let us in on some key findings from Survey Interactive’s audience research with the group, which involved on-site questionnaires completed by 53,313 interviewees across TM’s 110 regional and national websites:

TM’s online portfolio in Feb 08 was reaching 3.8 million adults a month according to the surveys – a different figure from the 5.5 million unique users calculated for the sites at the same time
More than a third of internet users from an area covered by a TM regional title accessed the paper’s website on a regular basis
A third of TMR website users regularly use more than one TMR website
The group’s regional sites had a higher proportion of ABC1 (the National Readership Survey classification for middle class) users
TM regional sites were given an average rating by interviewees of 8/10
The regional sites attracted a young audience, but not as young as expected, said O’Donnell: majority of users were in the 35-54 age bracket

According to O’Donnell, further research will be conducted soon, as the group’s digital audience continues to grow. Sales staff training on how best to use the figures collected by the research will also be implemented – with particular attention paid to the difference between stats for ‘adults’ and ‘unique users’ to the sites and how behaviour differs amongst print and online consumers.

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MediaGuardian: ABCe audits under review

Laura Oliver — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:53:18 +0000

The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) has completed the first stage of its review of how data is analysed by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) in its audit of newspaper website traffic.

One suggestion is to include all newspaper domains that contribute to the monthly traffic figures in the ABCe reports.

The review is ongoing with further reports expected in November.

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Shropshire Star posts 59% rise in page impressions

Laura Oliver — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:32:43 +0000

The Shropshire Star recorded 1,630,103 page impressions in April, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).

The figure rose by 59 per cent from the last audit of the site in November 2007 and 103 per cent year-on-year.
In April the site attracted 114,388 unique users – a 14 per cent increase over the five months from November.

On average the site recorded 6,942 unique users and 54,337 page impressions per day.

According to a release from publisher Midland News Association (MNA), the figures coincided with ‘a bumper harvest’ of user-generated content on the site following sudden snowfall in the county.

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Guardian most popular newspaper website in UK, according to Nielsen Online

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:43:23 +0000

Some significant differences between the figures for unique users visiting UK newspaper sites released by Nielsen Online today and those announced by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) last week.

While both rank the Guardian as the most popular in the UK, Nielsen’s figures suggest the site attracted 3 million unique users in the UK in April compared to 7,762,826 recorded by the ABCe.

The Telegraph attracted 2.7 million UK uniques in April, according to Nielsen – around 3.5 million less than the figure reported by the ABCe.

By the Nielsen figures the Sun attracted 1.9 million UK unique users, the Times 1.8 million and the Daily Mail 1.7 million over the same period.

Nielsen calculates its traffic figures using a panel-based method called NetView, which the company describes as ‘around 45,000 UK internet users who have opted in to download a meter which records all their PC, online and application usage on a continual and ongoing basis.’

In contrast, websites register themselves with the ABCe, which then audits data on web traffic recorded by the sites.

Very different methods – very different results.

Interestingly Nielsen also provides data on the ‘engagement’ of UK unique users with a site, differentiating between ‘heavy’ (>15 minutes), ‘medium’(>5 – >=15 minutes) and ‘light’(<=5 minutes) users.

The results of this analysis suggest the most popular online newspapers – the Guardian and Telegraph – have the highest percentage of light visitors (with 83%and 81% respectively).

The results for engagement in full:

Sun: 14% heavy, 16% medium, 70% light
Times: 13% heavy, 17% medium, 70% light
Daily Mail: 12% heavy, 14% medium,75% light
Telegraph: 7% heavy, 12% medium, 81% light
Guardian: 6% heavy, 11% medium, 83% light

The figures suggest that the Times is the only title to have gained in ‘heavy’ users since January 2008, while the Telegraph has recorded the biggest increase in ‘light’ users over the same period.

As Stephen Brooks, UK managing director for Nielsen Online, pointed out in the release: “Analysing the Telegraph’s audience by heavy, medium and light visitors reveals their dramatic growth in popularity is concentrated around light users, which could be due to the site’s improved visibility in search results,”

“This encapsulates the ‘reach vs engagement’ conundrum that newspaper sites face – is the best path to financial success attracting the most visitors or having a smaller core of more engaged users?”

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Daily Mail was ‘late online’ admits chief exec, as new site moves out of beta

Laura Oliver — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:10:45 +0000

A redesigned Daily Mail website – rebranded as Mail Online – is to be officially launched after a period of beta testing.

The old site will be shut down over the next couple of days as the new design is brought in, an announcement on the site said yesterday.

The revamp introduces a navigation bar with drop down previews of section headlines, a central picture gallery and a wider page format.

A bookmarking function to allow users to save stories on a personalised page is another new feature, while the right hand column of the homepage has been given over to articles from the newspaper’s popular Femail section.

Speaking to the House of Lords communications committee today, Charles Sinclair, chief executive of the Daily Mail and General Trust, said the paper had been ‘quite late online’.

“With one or two honorable exceptions the newspapers around the world were not making a good job of putting newspapers online,” he said.

“So the Mail has come to this rather late – in the last 18 months, but having decided what to do, it is now doing it rather well.”

The narrowing gap between audiences for the Mail website and Guardian.co.uk showed the success of its online strategy despite coming to the web relatively recently, Sinclair said.

The most recent figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) put the Mail website at 17,972,153 unique users to the Guardian’s 18,703,811.

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CNET.co.uk attracts record audience

Laura Oliver — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:28:25 +0000

Consumer technology site CNET.co.uk recorded its highest ever audience last year, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).

Page impressions for the site in during November rose to 18,079,527 – a 156 per cent increase on the same figures taken during November 2006.

In the same month the site attracted 2,539,283 unique users – an increase of 1,195,836 unique users (89 per cent) from the figure recorded in November 2006.

“This audit confirms our leading position in the highly competitive consumer technology space. Our huge growth is testament to the high quality and breadth of content on the site, together with our groundbreaking interactive resources,” said Jason Jenkins, editor of CNET.co.uk, in a press release from CNET Networks UK.

The positive figures for CNET.co.uk came as the site’s US parent company CNET announced it had signed severance packages with several of its board members.

According to a report on Paid Content, Joseph Gillespie, executive vice-president of CNET’s business unit, among others, have signed the agreements, which include compensation for a change in control of the company. The report suggests that this clause is included to address a possible takeover bid by a consortium of investors.

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@SoE: Guardian reporter: planning to use Hitwise figures in Telegraph marketing again?

Oliver Luft — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:51:31 +0000

Here’s a little moment of mirth from the closing session of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.

During the Q&A session, Media Guardian reporter Jemima Kiss asked Telegraph editor Will Lewis about the transparency of ABCe ‘benchmarking’ monthly web traffic figures and if he was planning to again use Hitwise metric results in Telegraph advertising.

The website had previously run an ad on the homepage quoting Hitwise and proclaiming its position as the top quality UK newspaper online.

The Hitwise metric is considered by some to be an inferior measurement of a websites’ traffic than the figures supplied by Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore or the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCE).

A visibly riled Lewis told her that Telegraph marketing campaigns were ‘none of her business’ and that the Telegraph site stats were open for all to see on the site.

But what was it that riled him?

Was it the Guardian’s quest to have ABCEs recognised across the industry as the sole measure of websites metrics?

Having it rubbed in that according to this metric the Telegraph trails the Guardian by quite some way, almost in a polar opposite of the print edition?

Or was he tired of the puritanical zeal on this issue that encourages Guardian employees, it seems, to ask him a similar question every time he appears in public?

Listen here to the exchange:

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