You'll probably see this kind of story being repeated across the press for the next couple of days.
This is because the ABCe have now changed access to their report so that normal people can't access them without registering (and being an employee of a member company).
The Daily Mail has somehow managed to add an extra 5 million readers in the last month. This is more than adding all the people who live in Birmingham. It's a bit unlikely to say the least.
Looking at the actual certificates, the Daily Mail's gone from 7.974m UK uniques last month to 8.316m UK uniques this month. That's an increase of 400k, which is 5%. That's good but definitely no the 19% that Brand Republic are reporting.
The increase has come from international traffic.
By UK traffic, the position is currently:
Guardian - 10.211m
Daily Mail 8.316m
Guardian wins.
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Newspapers Trying To Evolve
Will be interesting to see if there are any anti-competitive actions out of what this group of newspapers are planning to do.
So the American guys are getting together in Chicago to go through what they can do.
Our European guys are getting together in Barcelona to discuss their digital problems. Would have thought they can webconference that!
My own opinion is that there's room for a couple of large news providers to function but not room for all the ones that currently exist. Some are going to have to explore different ways to do what they do, and stomach a huge drop in their earnings.
So the American guys are getting together in Chicago to go through what they can do.
Our European guys are getting together in Barcelona to discuss their digital problems. Would have thought they can webconference that!
My own opinion is that there's room for a couple of large news providers to function but not room for all the ones that currently exist. Some are going to have to explore different ways to do what they do, and stomach a huge drop in their earnings.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Got Published!
After a long period of not having time to actually write anything for this, I recently got hte chance to write an opinion piece for our industry mag, "Media Week".
The subject was sparked off by an article by Rupert Murdoch talking about the fact that free content will not endure.
My edited opinion is below. Wrote it in about three hours so it doesn't detail everything I wanted to.
Essentially I think charging is unavoidable for most news sites. I think the bit they add value to are the opinion sections rather than the news sections (many people write news, few people write opinion that people agree with).
The future news site will select relevant news stories from various sources and then add in their own opinion. You'll have to pay to see the opinion but the selection \ filtering will be free.
That's what I think anyway. Grand writing here:
Looking at newspapers' current print-focused businesses, it's almost enough to cheer bankers up.
Their traditional market is drying up, attacked from the internet, the BBC, TV and freesheets. The inescapable problem is that papers make as much from the cover price than from advertising. But there's simply not enough money to support the number of online news sites.
Fantasy football or crosswords do not provide sufficient money either. Charging will come about or the number of news sources will have to reduce significantly. Charging users will be painful and needs a good micro-payment system, which doesn't yet exist.
If an easy way of paying a couple of pence per article can be implemented, then charging will happen successfully. Subscription will be a struggle, but giving users options is always the sensible way to run.
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Mail Grows On
I have completely missed the rise and rise of the Daily Mail. Since they did their relatively soft launch about a year ago, they've seen a steady rise in their UK traffic figures.
Comscore shows the region they're currently in:
Of course the wonderful work our team did on the Sun has paid dividends in terms of driving traffic to the Sun - it's now receiving the most traffic of any news site in the UK.
The real surprise is the Mail though, when we look at relative growth rates, the Mail is just about growing faster than the Sun. They are only three percent below the rate the Sun's been seeing.
Some makes sense as the core audience for the Mail is only coming online at the moment. However, this is unlikely to be the only reason for the drive. I suspect there has been some in-paper advertising going on, but it would definitely be interesting to find out some more info.
One of the obvious areas of growth for them has been their daily visitors:
Many of the papers use their daily stats as a key metric - they relate it directly to their daily circulation. On this measure, the Mail actually beats the Times and the Telegraph at the moment (their visitors are obviously coming back on more days than their competitors).
The Sun absolutely cleans up on this one at the moment, which gives a graph I suspect we'll use in the next awards entry! I won't put it into Swivel, but they're approaching double the Guardian's number.
Overall I think we're going to see the Mail attempting to wield a little more influence in the coming months. As much as I hate to say it, but I think we're going to have to spend some money with the Mail...
Comscore shows the region they're currently in:
Of course the wonderful work our team did on the Sun has paid dividends in terms of driving traffic to the Sun - it's now receiving the most traffic of any news site in the UK.
The real surprise is the Mail though, when we look at relative growth rates, the Mail is just about growing faster than the Sun. They are only three percent below the rate the Sun's been seeing.
Some makes sense as the core audience for the Mail is only coming online at the moment. However, this is unlikely to be the only reason for the drive. I suspect there has been some in-paper advertising going on, but it would definitely be interesting to find out some more info.
One of the obvious areas of growth for them has been their daily visitors:
Many of the papers use their daily stats as a key metric - they relate it directly to their daily circulation. On this measure, the Mail actually beats the Times and the Telegraph at the moment (their visitors are obviously coming back on more days than their competitors).
The Sun absolutely cleans up on this one at the moment, which gives a graph I suspect we'll use in the next awards entry! I won't put it into Swivel, but they're approaching double the Guardian's number.
Overall I think we're going to see the Mail attempting to wield a little more influence in the coming months. As much as I hate to say it, but I think we're going to have to spend some money with the Mail...
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Aljazeera
Didn't know that Aljazeera had redesigned. Their new site is really impressive in terms of ease of use.
The pictures really make it look more like a website - the current designs of the 'broadsheet' papers in the UK seem to try and make their websites look more like 'information resources' than proper websites.
It always confuses me to a certain degree - the newspapers spend significant amounts of money on sending journalists out to get pictures of what's going on. Then they put stories on the web that are mainly text. I admit that there are bandwidth costs involved, but these costs are reducing as time goes on.
Put some pictures up!
I look forward to seeing what the Guardian manage with their upcoming redesign.
The pictures really make it look more like a website - the current designs of the 'broadsheet' papers in the UK seem to try and make their websites look more like 'information resources' than proper websites.
It always confuses me to a certain degree - the newspapers spend significant amounts of money on sending journalists out to get pictures of what's going on. Then they put stories on the web that are mainly text. I admit that there are bandwidth costs involved, but these costs are reducing as time goes on.
Put some pictures up!
I look forward to seeing what the Guardian manage with their upcoming redesign.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Snap!
It must be a difficult job writing these headlines. Posh and bucks is too tempting to ignore. But also too obvious. Bet someone got a kicking for this though!
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Nuclear Nations
Was reading an article about how Iran is a couple of years away from creating a nuclear weapon.
There seems to be large amounts of contradictory information about Nuclear Weapons. If a 'rogue state' is involved, the sources talk about how difficult it is to make a nuclear weapon - they seem to need to build nuclear power plants first.
When they're talking about terrorism, it suddenly becomes very easy. There's this article from the BBC telling us that basically anyone can make a nuclear bomb, with a couple of important caveats.
Which one is true? How can Iran be two - three years away from a nuclear weapon if all someone needs is a bit of nuclear waste and a bit of chemistry training?
Personally I think the danger from nuclear weapons is exaggerated. If we set off many across the world, there would be a huge disaster. However, one or two bombs wouldn't cause much damage (on a global scale).
Also, why bother keeping them. It may all be a cunning trick. As the important people tell us, we need nuclear weapons so that we can credibly threaen to use them. In order to acheive this goal, all we need to do is convince people we have a nuclear weapon. Convincing people we have a nuclear weapon would be a good use of £10bn...
There seems to be large amounts of contradictory information about Nuclear Weapons. If a 'rogue state' is involved, the sources talk about how difficult it is to make a nuclear weapon - they seem to need to build nuclear power plants first.
When they're talking about terrorism, it suddenly becomes very easy. There's this article from the BBC telling us that basically anyone can make a nuclear bomb, with a couple of important caveats.
Which one is true? How can Iran be two - three years away from a nuclear weapon if all someone needs is a bit of nuclear waste and a bit of chemistry training?
Personally I think the danger from nuclear weapons is exaggerated. If we set off many across the world, there would be a huge disaster. However, one or two bombs wouldn't cause much damage (on a global scale).
Also, why bother keeping them. It may all be a cunning trick. As the important people tell us, we need nuclear weapons so that we can credibly threaen to use them. In order to acheive this goal, all we need to do is convince people we have a nuclear weapon. Convincing people we have a nuclear weapon would be a good use of £10bn...
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Fantastic
For anyone who doesn't like the Daily Mail nor the Evening Standard, here's a great little thing.
Managed to get it to say "Londoners fear Ken fiasco." Wonder if that's what the headline writers actually use - will have to see if I can see a similar machine at the Sun.
Managed to get it to say "Londoners fear Ken fiasco." Wonder if that's what the headline writers actually use - will have to see if I can see a similar machine at the Sun.
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