A regional daily’s social media channels scored the biggest year-on-year increase for the second consecutive month in the latest Trinity Mirror ABC Figures.
Newcastle’s Chronicle Live brand topped the tables for rises on both Facebook and Twitter, following a 165pc increase in Facebook ‘likes’ between April 2015 and April 2016.
A 109.8pc rise on Twitter over the same period of time left The Chronicle with 136,968 ‘followers’ overall.
Last month, Chronicle Live topped the same charts for growth between March 2015 and March 2016.
The North Wales Daily Post scored the highest increase in daily average unique browsers on its website between April 2015 and April 2016 at 55.6pc.
All of Trinity Mirror regional daily websites experienced a year-on-year increase for the same metric, but most also had a month-on-month decrease during April.
In ABC’s latest national newspaper figures, the i posted a 5.3pc month-on-month sales boost during April following its acquisition by Johnston Press and the closure of former stablemate The Independent. It is now selling an average 284,434 copies a day.
The following table shows Trinity Mirror’s web figures for April in full:
| Website | Daily Average UB | M-o-M change (pc) | Y-o-Y change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 210,306 | 1.7 | 13.7 |
| Chronicle Live | 219,536 | -3.9 | 19.9 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 60,193 | -1.8 | 22.4 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 84,590 | 1.7 | 55.6 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 52,978 | -15.6 | 15.5 |
| Liverpool Echo | 538,604 | 11.2 | 36.9 |
| Manchester Evening News | 626,389 | -5.2 | 25.8 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 107,086 | -12.3 | 33.9 |
| Wales Online | 292,880 | -16.5 | 32.2 |
The following table shows the Facebook figures for April in full:
| Brand | Facebook ‘likes’ | M-o-M change (pc) | Y-oY change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 212,655 | 2.0 | 115.2 |
| Chronicle Live | 231,468 | 4.0 | 165.0 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 29,907 | 3.8 | 60.3 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 104,936 | 2.4 | 133.2 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 67,770 | 1.6 | 91.7 |
| Liverpool Echo | 1,098,583 | 1.8 | 24.9 |
| Manchester Evening News | 970,660 | 2.3 | 70.1 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 93,203 | 1.4 | 55.9 |
| Wales Online | 247,451 | 4.0 | 141.5 |
The following table shows the Twitter figures for February in full:
| Brand | Twitter ‘followers’ | M-o-M change (pc) | Y-o-y change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 141,837 | 4.6 | 57.5 |
| Chronicle Live | 136,968 | 2.8 | 109.8 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 46,753 | 4.2 | 49.3 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 57,959 | 2.7 | 37.5 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 40,349 | 2.4 | 35.4 |
| Liverpool Echo | 276,786 | 2.8 | 33.4 |
| Manchester Evening News | 318,717 | 2.8 | 41.4 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 46,585 | 2.7 | 40.0 |
| Wales Online | 110,863 | 3.4 | 64.3 |
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Yawwwwwwn
Here we go again
I won’t bother to go down the route of what’s it mean in monetary terms?
It’s all just meaningless self praise and back patting worth nothing in business terms
Zzzzzzzzz
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Yep, ditto, El tel. I have quizzed TM staff as to how all this adds to profitability, or even just revenue, but no one has a clue. I also wonder what percentage of Simon Fox’s £2.3m annual package is comprised by print revenue as opposed to digital. We could then ask him to plough that amount (print) back into the company, say by rehiring pro photographers and experienced older reporters/subs, as endorsement of his view that newspapers aren’t worth the game any more. Whaddya say, Foxy, old chum?
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Horrendous the way TM supresses its paper ABC figures. If it was a country it’d be North Korea, but at least we’d have the added bonus that its nuclear weapons programme would only last nine weeks.
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As the Chronicle’s editor was good enough to correct me on my sales figure faux pas the other day perhaps he’d like to enlighten me and the gathered ensemble of bitter, twisted and out of touch old has beens how this new type of journalism works?
1. The company seem to set great store by the number of Twitter followers. Why? Is this relevant in any way? Is there any monetary value in all these tweets? Bearing in mind that Twitter recently announced a $90 million loss for a single quarter and a worrying fall in users, how does the Chron propose to make money from Twitter? If Twitter can’t make money . . .
2. In what way are the number of Facebook likes going to generate profits or increase the journalistic quality of the paper?
3. These “unique browsers” on the websites? Do they pay anything for the privilege?
I await my enlightenment.
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I’m not a great fan of the corporate back slapping that goes on when the numbers get trotted out.
But surely these figures – while not easily translated directly into pennies and pounds in the bank – show reader engagement with your product.
I can remember in the olden days when you spent an afternoon hearing an outside consultant explain in baffling terms how they calculated how many and how long your readers actually spent perusing your paper – and showed it on a hand-drawn cel, usually upside down on an overhead projector!
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Whether we like it or not the regional press and all publishers are ‘businesses’ so once again, what possible benefit is there in having lots of people take your product for free, look at it but pay nothing or have people ‘like’ what you’re giving free??
Ask any real busibess man or self employed entrepreneur and all would laugh aymt anyone taking these meaningless stats and figures seriously, it’s just an exercise in PR.
If you need proof of the pointlessness of all this, take these stats to the bank manager and see what value he puts on them and whether you’d get a loan based on this stuff.
Oh and in case you’re interested I am very used to analysing digital data and trends so can speak with a little authority on the real value of these figures.
Stick to reporting how many copies of your product, paper or publication you’re selling or how much ad revenue you’ve got compared to budget and year on year, until then this is just smoke and mirrors and probably indicated how bad things are in real ‘business’ terms
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As one who deals with major accounts,agencies and media buyers let me assure you none in my experience,and they include some sizeable clients, take this type of stat seriously, all they are interested in is ABC copy sale of print products, cost per thousand, demographic information, title reach and performance,not poor figures bundled up with digital social media et al as ‘ total audience ‘ which some groups put out and which always gets treated with derision and ridicule by those who know what they’re talking about, if anything it draws attention to an often poor performing title or publisher so is counter productive in cold hard business and revenue driving terms.
Nice and fluffy it may be and fun to look at I’m sure for those who are directly involved with social media matters,but taken seriously in affecting revenues or client spend? No certainly not.
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Luke has his experiences, but in my experience, clients do pay attention to size of social audience, because they know that it’s an audience they can access through a brand. It’s not the be all and end all, but it is a number which attracts attention. Some clients do only care about ABCs, others about website size, others about types of audiences reached.
As pointed out by others on here, it’s rather strange to see journalists being critical of a publisher which is sharing data on how good it is at engaging with readers, who in turn visit its website.
Another day, another example of a small group of commenters on here who have nothing better to do than convince themselves that things were better in their day
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Its it a case of ‘better in their day’ Daniel, it’s more a case of the worrying trend of excitement and flag waving about stats and popularity that have little or no long term benefit to the newspaper industry and on the back of the revenue pillars of the business : advertising revenues and copy sales in steep decline.
If the business model has shifted to such an extent that sustainable revenue growth, which is all every business needs to be able to stay in ‘business’ ,is not an issue and the business owners can continue to trade : employ people/ pay wages etc then popularity and site visitor / engagement stats will suffice, however when it comes to the harsh day to day,week to week,month to month practicalities of maintaining a business in the face of strong opposition and in a declining market then these kind of meaningless figures are of no use whatsoever, other than convincing those producing them that they matter, they don’t
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Daniel: Those harking back to “their day” are lost in the past and no one gives a fig what they think. But what I see on HTFP is a core of committed journalists aghast at the chronic mismanagement, perpetrated by lumbering corporations, which are themselves lost in the past, that is accelerating the decline of our industry. Make no mistake – local news is still profitable and, properly managed, and with wise investment, could remain so for years yet. Small independents show us how it can be done and never have I seen any of them on HTFP trumpeting about “retweets” or “Facebook likes”. TM is sacking all its best operators (see HTFP over the past few weeks), the people who actually produce what profits are left, yet announces meaningless figures like these as if they’re ahead of the game. In the final analysis, perhaps they are released to deflect attention away from issues such as a CE on £2.3m pa who sanctioned the disastrous New Day and various failed online ventures. On that matter I will say things WERE better in our day.
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@ daniel
“….on how good it is at engaging with readers, who in turn visit its website…”
a visit to a website contributes nothing to the business.
As others have said,its all very nice,flattering and pretty having someone admire a journalists work but as far as the media owners are concerned ,and like them or loathe them they pay the staff salaries, “viewers and site visitors dont pay the bills.
if you were an author,would you prefer people to buy your book or to borrow it from a library? exactly,same thing here
those lauding it need to see it for what its really worth-nothing in real terms
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Reader engagement with your product? Really?
What is the product and how are people engaging with it? Let’s look at the facts:
The paper product. If engagement through social media was worth anything, sales wouldn’t be falling. They are.
The digital product. There is no question that more people are reading newspapers (and other things) online. They do it because it’s easily accessible and more importantly, free. I reckon 99% of them would never use newspaper websites if they had to pay. I hardly ever click on an advert link on a newspaper website. In fact they get on my nerves. Not a good business model.
I agree about the backslapping. These are desperate people trying to justify their existence and find something positive in an industry that is enduring a slow, painful death. I can understand that but let’s not pretend it’s anything other than BS.
Those who defend this nonsense obviously have a vested interest. Why else would you do it? The real facts are there for all to see; the Internet is killing local newspapers.
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Coventry among the biggest cities in the UK. Web numbers not reflecting that. The Coventry Telegraph is slowly becoming insignificant.
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Off Spin – there’s a plethora now of rival websites springing up with the same kind of stuff in.
Newspapers could print editions to such an extent that startups couldn’t rival them, but now anyone with a basic understanding of web design and Facebook can with their new business model.
Ironically, said newspapers are now often so badly staffed that they’re slower to the breaking news than the smaller operations.
Also, I just don’t place any significance in Facebook likes or Twitter follows. At my last regional paper all our stories had comments sections like these and I reckon about 70% of said comments were derogatory ‘awful newspaper, must be a slow news day’, we’ve all read them.
‘Engaging’ with something doesn’t mean you value it. If you BUY it you probably do, but following it isn’t the same thing.
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Give it a rest Off Spin. It’s like listening to Chemical Ali!
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I rarely read my old paper these days – after more than a decade there in my youth it’s just completely out of touch, full or rewritten (or not) press releases.
But I did go on online to read a sports story and was told I needed to complete a questionnaire before I could read it.
First question: which of the Harry Potter films have you seen?
I was angry and dumbfounded. For the information I wanted, I just went straight to the club’s website and that is what I will be doing from now on.
Great social media strategy TM.
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This idea that a visit doesn’t make money shows how little many of the committed journalists Dick claims are on here know about how digital revenue works.
There are many, many models for generating revenue on websites. The most prevalent at present is national programmatic advertising, which all but guarantees money for every page served.
I think people often confuse ‘not making as much money as a newspaper’ for ‘not making money at all.’ Harry Blackwood certainly appears to be making that mistake time and again on here.
The sound of axes grinding here is almost deafening.
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Daniel: OK, so given these relentlessly upbeat figures why is TM firing so many of its best staff? Why aren’t company results/ share price going through the roof? You may be right when you say we don’t understand digital revenue but TM’s latest figures show print revenue down 19.6% between December 2015 and May (catastrophic), with a rise in digital sales nowhere near making up for this. So, the sceptics are right – these figures are tosh in commercial terms, and announcing them as some sort of triumph a smokescreen for serious systemic flaws in TM’s business model and the fact corporations are now inherently unable to make sustainable profits from local news.
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So, Daniel, you want to answer the question that always gets asked on here whenever a digital numbers story comes up on here…
HOW MUCH MONEY?
Let’s say one of my stories on the Birmingham Mail or Coventry Telegraph gets 150 views. What’s the company earning from that?
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Daniel.
1. I’m making no mistakes. The figures back up what I’m saying.
2. I have no axe to grind. I was right almost 20 years ago when I said the Internet would kill local newspapers. It just about has the human cost has been significant and very sad.
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” ….. national programmatic advertising, which all but guarantees money for every page served…”
If that’s not the definition of content to generate churn then I don’t know what is, perhaps Daniel can explain what that is and how it works ?
And quite how that benefits the end user eg: the local reader or the small businessman looking for a return on ad revenue spent God only knows but I guess it keeps someone in a job staring at a screen all day.
Meantime the quest for top quality content and news that people want to buy to read and the search for illusivecad revenues goes on while a few pounds drops into the coffers via “national programmatic advertising”
Boys and toys eh?
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I was in a meeting when a senior commercial manager said the sales team had better get used to selling on line advertising and get their head around the web sale as in a few years time the revenue will come from web advertising and newspapers would be left behind and too costly to produce and no longer exist, we he was right about one part of it
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Dick Minim, El tel and other critics of these figures, yes, I agree that publishing them without any context is pure vanity metric designed to ‘wow’ potential advertisers, however, increasing these figures can, without doubt, help to generate additional revenue.
I’ve said it before but regional publishers hang their current advertising models on impressions for mostly national brands. TM trumpets more than 100 million users a day across its network and national advertisers pay to ‘reach’ this audience as part of their branding strategies. So, for example, Ryanair, McDonalds etc will happily pay to have adverts about their latest ‘deals’ across multiple sites as they help to maintain brand awareness; they don’t really care about clickthroughs.
For local advertisers who want people to click through to their website, the likes of banner ads etc are notoriously poor in terms of ROI. This is one of the vast differences between print and digital advertising.
For most news websites, search engines (mainly Google) provide the lion’s share of referrals but the next highest will be referrals from social media. This means that the more likes/followers each publisher has, the greater chance they have of increasing the number of referrals to their websites. This generates a greater number of impressions for the national advertisers who are likely to be paying per 1,000. That’s means more money!
Since the launch of Facebook’s Instant articles, Apple News and Google AMP articles, there is little doubt that some publishers will now be considering the options around have no costly web presence at all. Publishers can allow these platforms to deliver their content for them, they can still sell advertising themselves for a small fee but, most importantly, they can get paid a cut of any advertising provided by Facebook, Apple or Google.
Like it or not, but these three tech giants – and don’t forget Microsoft looming large again in the background – will own digital publishing over the next three to five years. All local news publishers, small independents or large corporate giants, will need to be aware of how to make the most out of delivering news via social networks and, much like newspapers, distribution size and cost will play a major part in their success!
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Just in the nck of time Oliver rides in with a clear and comprehensive analysis of the situation. Ever since their inception local newspapers have been “social networks”, and what we are seeing today is that function harnessed to power of global electronic comms. The principle underlying the enterprise is exactly the same – disseminating news in a professional and profitable manner – but the methods of doing it are radically different, requiring radically different staffing structures and roles. And therein lies the rub for us. Most of the anxiety expressed on HTFP focuses, understandably, on fear of losing our jobs, whether this be because of simple cost-cutting or the fact the jobs themselves are transformed into something totally different to what we are used. Oliver’s analysis is surely correct – but unfortunately that means within a few years most of us will be gone, along with offices and other hangovers from the Analogue Age. That’s progress.
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To answer Slate Grey, 150 page views – probably not very much. It would all depend on what advertising was served up alongside it. It might an affiliate link, where the company gets paid if someone then completes a transaction, or it might be programmatic revenue nationally. Or it might be a local client paying a lot more to appear next to your content. But, for 150 page views, probably not a lot.
The ‘internet will kill the regional press’ argument is fair in a sense – but what Harry and others seem to think is the solution is for regional press to ignore the internet or stick up paywalls. Both seem reasonable if your priority is to preserve print, and if you’re prepared to ignore the fact people get their news from Facebook and Twitter these days too. Journalists may not like that, but it’s what is happening.
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“For most news websites, search engines (mainly Google) provide the lion’s share of referrals but the next highest will be referrals from social media.”
100% wrong.
Facebook is the traffic driver. Not even a case of calling it social, its Facebook.
If Facebook change how they do things you could see PV’s / User data tumble off a cliff. Scary really.
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Point taken Oliver and Dick Minim.
But some statistical comparisons between print and social media are worth examination.
Like other big city papers, the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle had well over 300,00 readers in its heyday (at 2.5 readers per bought copy).
That means more than 100,000 buyers, along with many big local advertisers and classifieds users PAID for the content that 60 per cent of the total readership get free.
In the new printdigital age, the Chron also has 137,000 non-paying Twitter folllowers.
Ergo: The news delivery model must change.
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To end all this negative debate, let’s have a named bigwig from one of the big media corporations on this site explaining how what they are doing with Facebook, Twitter, etc is a good thing, along with solid figures demonstrating that their policies are bringing in enough money to justify the slash and burn techniques being practised in news rooms all over the country and the deliberate strangling of print to make way for the new era.
I’ll stand back now to avoid the crush as said bigwigs beat a path to HTFP’s door.
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Really. I tried so hard to be interested in this story, because it is the future. But I just ended up thinking thank heavens I don’t rely on this crazy new world for a living. Good luck in cyberspace everyone.
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Facebook: 12 years old. Twitter: 10 years old. Most newspapers have been online in one form or another since the Nineties: There’s nothing new about these ‘new’ media. And yet with all those years of experience honing the digital product, still no one seems able to work out how to make them actually pay – or, if they do, to tell us how much. It’s not a lot to ask, surely, given it would shut us old curmudgeons up once and for all?
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RT, please take a proper look at all your metrics to understand your traffic, not just your inaccurate overview in Omniture. My mistake was to loosely use the word ‘referrer’, so I shall now be precise with ‘original referring domains’.
Referrals account for all previous URLs linked to your site that do not match internal URL filters. These can be wildly inaccurate. If you work in a former LW title, just check the volume of self-referrals. It’s set up very poorly indeed and I wouldn’t trust any of it!
Now, an original referring domain is the first referring domain a visitor entered your site on, regardless of subsequent referring domains. This means a much more accurate picture of where your traffic originated.
For most titles, Google accounts for just over 50 per cent at present, whereas Facebook is around 8 per cent. For info, Twitter is less than 1 per cent!
Yes, Facebook is by far and away the most prominent social media platform, but Google is still the most-used search engine and drives more traffic overall. That gulf has shortened over the last two years; it used to be about 60 per cent compared with less than 4 per cent!
Even so, Facebook changes are today no more scary than Google changes have been over the last seven or eight years.
In fact, it highlights my point that the current digital advertising models of regional publishers are so reliant on reach and impressions, that they may be forced to partner with these tech giants to even have a commercially viable platform on which to publish their news at all!
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Muker boy, forget about ‘bought copies’ and ‘paying readers’ as for most local newspapers in the last decade, this has barely covered much more than the costs of print and distribution.
The current online model is the equivalent of a free newspaper that relies on selling adverts priced according to its reach.
You can’t really change the delivery channel per se, but the method in which it is used needs to change if local newspapers are to remain relevant to their local advertisers.
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The comments from all the tech savvy young gunslingers is making me chuckle.
About 15 years ago when Johnston Press were putting all of their eggs in their internet basket I was adamant it was folly. I sold my Johnston Press shares at that time for about 530p each. JP has had 15 years to prove they were right with their internet revolution. The share price today is 38p and very close to an all-time low. The true value is of course less than 1p.
Perhaps the tech savvy experts can explain to me why that is if the new media interweb thing is such a good idea.
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Harry, without that ‘internet basket’ your JP shares would have probably been at less than 38p today, if trading at all. Yes, there’s clearly no easy way for publishers to monetise online journalism but there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to make people buy more newspapers either. It would appear that you did the right thing in selling them regardless!
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