Following his comments to the Society of Editors (SoE) conference on the meaningless of monthly unique users stats for newspaper website advertisers, Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online, spoke with Journalism.co.uk about what improvements are needed for web metrics:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/martinclarke.mp3]Beet TV’s Andy Plesser, writes that the Washington Post was long a pioneer in online content,
“[and] … registered the biggest percentage jump on Election Day, compared to the previous Tuesday, Nielsen Online reported last night. Although far from the newly crowned traffic leader, CNN.com, the Post jumped 113 percent to 2.3 million unique visitors”
So, CNN were the real winners of the day with a 400 per cent traffic spike for the site.
Here, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien speaks to Beet TV about reporting from the exit polls, and the changes she has witnessed in web reporting over the past 12 years.
Another site profiting (well, in terms of traffic anyway) from the current economic situation: Northcliffe’s ThisisMoney.co.uk posted record traffic figures last month.
According to a blog post from the site’s assistant editor Adrian Lowery, ThisisMoney recorded a 23 per cent month-on-month rise in unique users to 1.66 million unique users last month.
Page impressions rose by 43 per cent from September to 14.17 million.
While many financial news sites saw traffic spikes during October, TiM’s coverage of the Icesave issue and the UK banking crisis drove users to the site, Lowery added.
Blog publisher Shiny Media recorded a 7 per cent increase in unique users to its network of sites in October, according to Google Analytics figures posted to the company’s blog.
Unique users to the blogs grew to 3.2 million for the month with 6.1 million page impressions.
Figures for individual titles for October included:
Crafty Crafty – a 40 per cent rise in unique users to 89,000
CorrieBlog – a 37 per cent rise in unique users to 79,000
Xboxer.tv – rise of 34 per cent
ShinyStyle.tv – rise of 28 per cent
Kiss and Make Up – rise of 24 per cent
In the blog post, Shiny co-founder Chris Price said the figures might be prompted in part by the economic downturn, as more people turn to lifestyle and home-based interest sites.
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.
US-based environmental news sites aren’t pulling in web users prompting media organisations to question whether they have overestimated the power of the green trend.
The number of readers of FT.com among the respondents to the survey, which questioned ‘senior decision makers’ in 17 European countries, rose from 9.2 per cent in 2006 to 10.3 per cent.
Yahoo has announced the rebranding of IndexTools as Yahoo Web Analytics (beta). Currently it is an enterprise product and not available to everyone, it could soon be a consumer and small business tool.
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.
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:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/GuyLipscombe.mp3]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:
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.