How will website traffic measurement be affected by the introduction of pay walls? Suzanne Bearne considers the impact on UK newspaper websites audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).
Some interesting takeaways from new traffic stats for US newspapers released by Nielsen this week and reported by Editor & Publisher.
Unique users to the Newsday website, which went behind a paywall in late October, decreased by 2.2 million in October 2009 to 1.7 million in November.
Elsewhere 16 of the top 30 newspapers in the figures posted a year-on-year drop in unique users – in part a result of the bumper traffic created by the presidential race in November 2008.
Unique users to the New York Times, USA Today and LA Times websites fell by more than 20 per cent year-on-year, according to the November stats. But the New York Times did record the highest number of unique users for the month at 16,635,000.
But the biggest winner by far in November was Tampa Bay Online, which saw a gigantic 354 per cent jump in unique users to 1,724,000.
Related reading: More on the average time spent on US newspaper websites in November
Mixed results for US newspaper websites a year on from the traffic surge generated by the US presidential race, according to Nielsen Online figures reported by Editor & Publisher.
The stats suggest that readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution spent 12 minutes more on its site in November 2009 when compared with the same period last year.
Half of the top 30 websites recorded a year-on-year increase in average user time spent on site, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution posting the highest average time for the month at 23 minutes and 38 seconds.
But the New York Times’ website recorded the biggest year-on-year decrease in average time spent on the site by users. The figures suggest a drop of more than 19 minutes in the past year to a time of 17 minutes 17 seconds for November 2009.
Related reading on Journalism.co.uk: See the UK’s national newspaper websites’ traffic report for November from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe)
Glynnis MacNicol for Mediaite says it should come as no shock that the media “in a year of hard news [2009] (…) has gone soft” and devoted time and coverage to “shiny distractions” of stories.
[U]ntil someone creates a new, workable business model the coin of the internet realm is traffic. And traffic is most cheaply generated by frequency and shock value, two things which are very much at odds with in-depth reporting (…) Traffic talks in the new media internet world, what it does not do yet is report and/or research whilst penning the required 15 posts per day.
Fascinating videos from the New York Times exploring where geographically-speaking traffic to its website comes from and what kinds of devices are being used to access it.
Explains Nick Bilton on the NYTimes’ Bits Blog:
The top video represents readers coming to the website from the United States. The second video shows a map of our global readers. The circles indicate two things. First, the yellow circles represent readers coming to the main website from desktop or laptop computers, and the orange circles indicate readers using mobile phones to access our mobile site. Second, the size of the circles represents the number of readers at that moment in time. You can see the corresponding time stamp in the upper left corner of the videos.
The videos show the traffic patterns for 25 June 2009 – the day news broke of Michael Jackson’s death:
The New York Times site traffic, US, June 25, 2009 from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.
The New York Times site traffic, World View, June 25, 2009 from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.
The Newspaper Society has launched Locally Connected, what it calls ‘the UK’s first integrated print and online audience currency’.
It’s a new way of measuring newpapers’ print and online reach: “The development of a robust and reliable system of multimedia audience measurement has been one of the biggest challenges facing all media today,” said NS president, David Fordham.
“Locally Connected now gives advertisers a unique cross-media planning system, allowing them to effectively target local communities across the UK in print as well as online.”
To mark its launch, the NS announced that research conducted by Telmar showed websites extend local newspaper audience reach by 14 per cent, ‘particularly among upmarket and core middle age groups’.
In addition, the NS is carrying out a ‘qualitative digital insight project’ which will look at how people engage with their local newspaper website.
Chie Elliott looks into the relationship between journalists that use Twitter and the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) results for their respective titles in this post.
“Media people are using Twitter as an instrument for sharing and crowdsourcing, for networking and live-reporting. A journalist with a popular blog or social media presence can only be positive for the publication’s brand. If Twitter is a waste of work time, time has never been so well wasted. Furthermore, if a journalist is creating content while simultaneously publicising the content carrier, isn’t that doing two jobs for the price of one?”
via The Media Blog: Are journalists who tweet value for money?.
This is a cross-post from Malcolm Coles’ personal website. You can read other posts by Coles on the Journalism.co.uk Editors’ Blog at this link.
UK national newspaper Twitter accounts are continuing to grow – but at an ever slower rate, according to the latest figures for the 130 accounts I’m tracking:
The detail
These 130 accounts had 1,801,811 followers on November 2, up by 137,568 from 1,664,243 on October 1. Of that increase, 95,007 (or 69 per cent) was for the @guardiantech account (which benefits from being on Twitter’s suggested user list).
(NB – the Telegraph seems to have deleted its badly spelled @TelegraphScienc account, so I’ve restated October’s figures to be for 130 accounts, rather than the 131 I used to track).
The biggest mover was @MirrorFootball, up 11 places to 81st (from 455 to 809 followers), suggesting the Mirror is finally making some use of Twitter (most of its other accounts are near the bottom – and only appear to have moved up a place because of the demise of the Telegraph’s Science account).
As ever, the full spreadsheet is here or you can see the iframe below.
This post originally appeared on Malcolm Coles’ blog at this link.
June 2009 saw the Mail Online unexpectedly overtake both the Guardian and Telegraph in the ABCes with the most monthly unique users partly on the back of US traffic and Michael Jackson stories, a position it held for both July and August.
Fast forward to September and the story is the same as earlier in the year – Guardian 1st, Telegraph 2nd and Mail 3rd. So what changed from June to September? To find out, I’ve compared the ABCe figures for UK and foreign visitors in June and September. The difference between the Guardian’s performance and that of the Telegraph and Mail is revealing.
Table: September unique visitors (millions) and percentage change since June
| Total | Change | UK | Change | Overseas | Change | |
| Guardian | 33m | 14% | 11.9m | 17% | 21.1m | 12% |
The Guardian’s total visitor numbers grew 14 per cent from June to September (up from 29m to 33m). There was a 17 per cent increase in UK visitors and a 12 per cent increase in visitors from abroad. This makes it the most popular online newspaper in the UK by some way (it’s 2.4m ahead of the Mail in second place).
UK visitors accounted for 36 per cent of the total in September (barely changed from 35 per cent in June).
Analysis: Telegraph sees growth overseas
Table: September unique visitors, percentage change since June
| Total | Change | UK | Change | Overseas | Change | |
| Telegraph | 31m | 14% | 9.1m | -1% | 21.9m | 22% |
The Telegraph has also seen a 14 per cent increase in total visitors from June (27.2m) to September (31m).
However, the geographical breakdown is revealing – its UK unique visitor numbers are down one per cent from June to August but its overseas visitors are up 22 per cent (from 18m to 21.9m). It’s now the most visited UK newspaper abroad – but only the 3rd most visited inside the UK.
As a result, the proportion of its visitors that comes from the UK has fallen from 34 per cent to 29 per cent – the lowest of any UK newspaper (the Mail held this honour back in June).
The Telegraph saw the biggest increase in overseas visitors of any newspaper – but because its UK traffic fell, the Guardian beat it into 2nd place.
Analaysis: Mail Online records UK growth only
Table: September unique visitors, percentage change since June
| Total | Change | UK | Change | Overseas | Change | |
| Daily Mail |
30m | 2% | 9.5m | 15% | 20.6m | -2% |
The Mail’s traffic stood fairly still between June and September – it had 30m visitors last month, up just two per cent on three months ago. But its story is the reverse of the Telegraph’s.
The Mail saw strong UK growth – up 14 per cent to 9.5m visitors in three months. Overseas visitors, however, fell by 2 per cent to 20.6m. As a result, it now gets 32 per cent of its visitors from the UK (up from 28 per cent in June).
And the rest …
As for the others:
This table has all the stats. If you can’t see the iframe, you can see the full spreadsheet here.
The Express doesn’t take part in the ABCes. The FT does not participate every month.
Visitor numbers to the News of the World’s website reached a record daily high of 585,000 last Sunday, according to the title. NOTW’s of pop singer Stephen Gately’s death, which ran that day, boosted the total, with 290,000 visits for that one day.
The traffic surge caused the website to proclaim victory of its printed rival The People, which sold fewer copies in print on the same day, the NOTW release boasted.
In comparison with last month’s Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) average daily unique user figures for other national newspaper sites, 585,000 may be a record for the News of the World, but other papers’ sites posted higher figures for August. Admittedly the NOTW figure was UK-only visitors, but average daily visits for TheSun.co.uk last month, for example, was 1,411,227.