The number of visitors to Trinity Mirror’s regional websites more than doubled over the past 12 months, despite some titles showing a decrease in traffic during October.
The websites of the Daily Post, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Manchester Evening News and Newcastle Chronicle all saw the number of daily average unique browsers drop during the month.
However, according to the latest ABC monthly multi-platform report, all of the company’s titles experienced a year-on-year rise between October 2014 and October 2015, most of more than 50pc.
The biggest increases were from the Welsh sites, with the Daily Post’s recording a 96.8pc increase in average unique browsers and Wales Online seeing a 80.9pc rise.
The MEN had the highest number of unique browsers overall, with 564,580 readers per day on average.
October was the second month in which statistics were published for the number of Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter ‘followers’ among the titles.
The following table shows the web figures for October in full:
| Website | Daily Average UB | M-o-M change (pc) | Y-o-Y change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 206,443 | 11.79 | N/A |
| Coventry Telegraph | 67,239 | 16.1 | 60.1 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 74,572 | -0.4 | 96.8 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 47,851 | -23 | 17.8 |
| Liverpool Echo | 487,685 | 23.4 | 67.6 |
| Manchester Evening News | 564,580 | -3.1 | 47 |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 189,738 | -7.9 | N/A |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 108,280 | 10.8 | 53.5 |
| Wales Online | 323,478 | 0.1 | 80.9 |
The following table shows the Facebook figures for October in full:
| Website | Facebook ‘likes’ | M-o-M change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 143,100 | 9 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 23,650 | 5.6 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 62,636 | 13.5 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 50,830 | 9.9 |
| Liverpool Echo | 1,007,897 | 0.4 |
| Manchester Evening News | 772,929 | 3.9 |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 130,166 | 7 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 77,094 | 4.7 |
| Wales Online | 161,566 | 12.1 |
The following table shows the Twitter figures for October in full:
| Website | Twitter ‘followers’ | M-o-M change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 112,322 | 3.3 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 37,978 | 3.9 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 49,175 | 2.3 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 34,614 | 2.2 |
| Liverpool Echo | 236,855 | 2.6 |
| Manchester Evening News | 270,483 | 2.8 |
| Newcastle Chronicle | 79,311 | 2.7 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 39,360 | 2.5 |
| Wales Online | 86,937 | 4.3 |
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Please tell me we don’t send these figures out to our advertisers. I’d hate to think of them having information they probably give less of a toss about than we do.
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I always read these stories in the style of comical Ali.
“We are slaughtering the Americans ins their tanks, we have many, many increasing page impressions – daily”
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Everyone knows month-by-month traffic is volatile by now, surely?
If you get a big story (eg the football transfer window) one month that gives you a huge traffic spike, you are not necessarily going to match that the next month.
That’s why we use year-on-year stats.
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Sorry, is this good or bad? I’d just like to see the financial figures laid out in the above format then we’d know what we were really looking at. Those 1,007,897 Faceboook “likes” for the Liverpool Echo, for example, are they worth a pound a pop or what? Sorry to be an analogue old fool but I was born in 1709.
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WTF. I’m at a complete loss trying to work out what relevance these figures have to anything let alone advertisers.
An example if I may. I’ve just spent a few minutes reading three stories that interested me (two more than usual) on the Hartlepool Mail website. Now, I’m sure there were adverts and other devices on there that the imposters who run the industry set great stall by, but I don’t know what they were. More importantly, hell will freeze over before I’d click on anything other than a story I wanted to read.
So, I’ve got no idea how many clicks, page impressions or whatever my little peek onto the Mail website generated. What I do know is it’s irrelevant. Unless you are kidding yourself and kidding others that it is.
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
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So more people ‘like’ the Liverpool Echo than live in Liverpool? Just shows how meaningful that stat is.
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Could it just be, that maybe the public are not as stupid as the websites think they are ?.
Stories can be found all over social media these days, the BBC also covers local news better than the local papers themselves who are always playing catch up , nornally with horrendous U.G.C. pictures.
Meanwhile local churnalism continues to cut and paste press releases and compile stupid lists and ridiculous web galleries. Forget hard news.
or any news come to that. Is it any wonder people are looking elsewhere
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Oh dear, we’re a grumpy lot on here aren’t we? I can see why you wouldn’t want to show these numbers to advertisers, Slate Grey?
Jeff Jones is his usual negative self. Easy to claim to love journalism but throw rocks at it from the safety of (I guess) a form of PR.
Paul is quite right about the volatility of month on month stats and anyone with half an ounce of sense will be able to guess why some websites are up and others are down – just as in the days when newspapers sales were the be all and end all.
Dick asks if these numbers are worth anything? I’d say yes – the Facebook stats show the size of the audience which care enough about the Echo to like them so they appear in their feed. It’s down to the Echo to then make sure their stuff is appealing enough for people to interact with it, thus increasing ability to appear at the top of followers’ feeds and attract more readers, who in turn click through to the website, see the advertising (in whatever form).
I don’t recognise Jaded Tog’s view of the world. The BBC invariably isn’t first to breaking news in my area, that’s the local weekly paper which has a strong website. And the whole point of this article is that people aren’t looking elsewhere, they are looking at Trinity Mirror’s websites in increasing numbers. Remove the blinkers mate.
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Can’t see, I should have said, not can see.
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An intelligent reply as ever, Ronald, but do you remember the days when hard financial figures accompanied announcements like these? Why so coy now? Someone on HTFP likened assessing the worth of online operations to counting the number of people gazing in at a department store window but never buying – of slight statistical interest, maybe, but not hard business. I’m not anti-internet, by the way, far from it, but I just wish corporations like TM would stop trumpeting nigh-on meaningless figures as if they were some sort of salvation for a sunset industry. With TM about to rationalise after its Local World takeover, I fear there will be many casualties before Christmas – so what use a million “likes” for Liverpool then if you’re signing on?
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Ronald McDonald, likewise I presume you’ve got some kind of investment in the new order, presumably a web editor or some such?
I do love journalism, that’s why I hate this garbage and it’s why I left when we lost photographers and eventually an office building.
I’m an online content writer but work freelance for nationals, what do I win?
Claiming people who no longer work in journalism on a day-to-day basis seemingly have no right to comment is laughable, maybe these people don’t work in this industry any more because they felt sad watching it be torn up and ripped apart?
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I’m not surprised web hits are falling in places.
Remember the old adage that ‘content is king.’
If newsrooms are cutting back how on earth are they going to find the news and the time to put it in print as well as online.
My sources tell me that JP online income and audiences have fallen thanks in part to the devastating effects of Newsroom of the Future and its resultant loss of journalists.
I can only wonder what will happen at Local World, where its editors and deputies are obsessed with getting those web hits.
Will Trinity Mirror cost cutting lead to further declining online audiences there as well?
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There was a story on the MEN website a couple of weeks back and the web headline was ‘what time is the Manchester City match on?’
I kid you not.
I don’t mind people defending this nonsense but at least be honest about it. Just say ‘we don’t know what to do about declining print sales and for now this is the best we can do’. I’d respect that. Don’t tell me it’s some kind of brave new world and that people who worked in well staffed newsrooms and produced quality newspapers are some kind of dinosaur who simply don’t understand how things work now.
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I likened web stats to people looking in a shop window but not buying and sales people claiming huge success by the number of people who took brochures at fairs and in new car showrooms – all wholly meaningless in a commercial environment unless someone hands over hard cash.
The only accurate guide to how successful valued or popular a newspaper is is by the number of copies bought and sold and by the direct interaction of the buyers to stories or response to advertisers through direct sales as a result,no one least of all readers or advertisers are interested in or impressed by page impressions, unique visitors ,web traffic or other trotted out jargon unless goods or services they have paid to advertise aren’t moving as a result : basic income to outlay .
I now see that ABC have agreed to ” bundle up” all platforms ( print, web, social media) to puff up readership numbers much to the delight of editors and regional press publishers which will only further muddy the waters of exactly how many copies of X paper are being sold which is all most advertisers want to know.
Smoke and Mirrors being used in an attempt to fool the public and to give a false impression of the worth of a product
Sounds a tad criminal to me, fools no one and wholly irrelevant apart to to those who have a vested interest in doing so
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The difference between the shop window and a person on a website is, like a print ad, money is made even if someone doesn’t do anything with that ad. It’s far from the same rate as print, but don’t pass off page views as worthless.
What use 1m likes if you are on the dole? Good question but if TM, Newsquest et al just sit on their hands with that view, there will be far more on the dole. As for the ‘when is the city game on?’ what’s wrong with that? If it was at the expense of everything else you would expect from the MEN, I’d agree with you, but you’re doing the MEN a dis-service by trying to claim that typifies MEN content. Never let the facts get in the way, hey?
As for Jeff Jones, of course you have a right to have an opinion, it’s just a shame it’s only ever a negative one which I assume is based on a personal experience within the industry. Don’t forget more people than ever before are reading regional news now.
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It’s not about ‘money made’ as far as the advertiser is concerned it’s irrelevant how many people viewed a site or page if they don’t then buy a product as a result.
The only people making money , but not enough to make it profitable, are the sites themselves as the mug advertiser has to pay up front for X page impressions as opposed to how many people clocked through to their ad so the similie with regards to window shopping is a relevant one,commercially from an advertisers point of view no ones interested in lookers, just buyers.
The fact that businesses have been lured into web pages for the reps self serving reasons and are getting no response has killed it.
Training the ad reps to trot out half baked facts and meaningless jargon that they themselves don’t understand is putting more people off web than its attracting
All an advertiser has ever wanted to know is one of expectations and risk limitation : if X people see it and it costs me y to advertise is it good value
The sooner we get back to plain speaking and simple honest facts and figures that people can understand and relate to the better but I guess RP is too far down the line to expect that
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Window shopping is a good example , do businesses want 50 people in the shop looking round or 5 people buying?
Same with print and web
The more people who buy a paper and see a well designed eye catching ad the more chance of selling an item, trouble is so few copies are being sold and the ads are thrown together with no care or thought about design or effectiveness of the message just getting the job off their desk,then crammed in with other badly designed ads on a page that the chances of response are almost nil.
One of the fundamental issues with trying to make money on the web is that it’s not a user friendly advertising medium
People tend to browse the web for information or entertainment, knowledge etc
The buying sites are popular as there their sole purpose, someone seems out the site to buy
On non selling/ buying sites the ads are seen as an intrusion, web ads seek a viewer , print ads tend to be sought.
Confusing the issue with irrelevant stats and figures in an attempt to prove popularity of a site is missing the point.
If a sites not deemed worth seeking out and visiting through reasons of quality of content then no amount of hype will attract a viewer
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I made similar points to a PR company today.
With web hits, what matters is quality not quantity.
It’s no good getting all excited if your website has many hits during the daytime if that readership is made up of unemployed who have no disposable income.
What I have noticed locally with the Local World title I was last working for is they were so excited about getting web hits.
But what was the point if the daytime audience was made up of unemployed council house tenants with no money to spend.
The paper seemed keen to give them fluff and trivia rather than stories with meat.
Trouble is, the readers who had that disposable income so beloved of advertisers were turned off by the fluff and trivia. Instead, they wanted meat.
Rampant cost-cutting, pumping out fluff and trivia and accommodating the bottom-end of the market, the lowest common demoninator is economic suicide.
I hate to sound snobbish and non-egalitarian, but newspapers are businesses. That means we need to offer quality for those who have the means to pay for it.
Sadly, the lust for web hits is pushing papers in to a race to the bottom and it is back firing big time.
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Just a quick point. The stories asking whether Man City or United are on TV are read on average by between 20k and 110k people. Why is it wrong to give people the information they are looking for?
We used to print the chemist rotas. It was one of my first jobs when I was a trainee reporter. How is this different? Information is part of the service we provide alongside local news, sport and what’s on.
And yes I do work for the MEN and I’m very proud of our 47% year on year increase in people reading our stories. Isn’t that what journalists want – for people to read our stuff?
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Hi Sarah
Nobody is having a go at you or the MEN’s staff, who are doing a hard job these days due to the changes to the industry, I’ve never read on here – or heard anyone – have a dig at journalists for the state of the industry.
The issue is what stories are deemed of web hit value. For instance, the public information your used to print (we used to print ‘make sure you turn your clocks back this weekend) were in addition to the main news, they were not designed to draw people in to buying the paper.
Headlines such as the Manchester City one are designed to show up in Google searches so that people access your site, so there’s more web hits which can be shown to advertisers. I imagine some resource has gone in to writing this story for that end, rather than – for example – send someone to court or a council meeting.
Public service is pretty low down on a newspaper’s agenda these days, let’s not pretend it comes into their thinking when it comes to stories like this.
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There’s an old adage that half the money spent on advertising is wasted, but no one knows which half. I suspect we’re at last starting to find out.
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Intersting point @steerpike
I think these days it’s ALL the money etc etc
With more specific and targeted mediums to advertise in, more direct competitor publications and more publications aiming at core demographics the old saying no longer applies, nowadays advertisers are more attuned to where the response has come from and when as opposed to previously when they had few other options, newspapers were selling well and playing the ‘ you need to advertise with us or you’ll miss out’ card so they did and hoped for the best
My how the times have changed
I know it’s off the main subject but an interesting aside
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