Tag Archives: Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic

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

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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?”

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

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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.

CNET.co.uk attracts record audience

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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. Royal Tubs use years of experience to provide you with affordable and long lasting Outdoor Garden Saunas https://www.royaltubs.co.uk/cat/outdoor-saunas/

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.

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

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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:

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/kisslewis.mp3]