So this is kind of cool for media-business geeks — and there are more of you than just me out there, right?
The Star Tribune has become the first U.S. newspaper to integrate several digital media activities in their semi-annual Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) report, including unique Web site cookies, e-newsletters deliveries and opens, mobile alert traffic, and Facebook friends, according to an ABC spokesperson. This forward-looking move only makes sense, given the aggression with which newspapers are trying to capture digital revenues through new products (and justify traffic to advertisers).
Some of this will mean more to true web and marketing nerds than it does to me, so I encourage informed analysis in the comments.
Here are October 2009 numbers for the most influential and best-trafficked local news operation:
Web site traffic: 6.16 million unique cookies; 92.5 million page impressions.
Cookies are small pieces of code in your browser to help a site remember you. Page impressions are defined as “the combination of one or more files presented to a viewer as a single document as a result of a single request received by the server... The counted page impression may not necessarily be in focus or visible in the user’s browser.” Hmm ...
E-Newsletter delivery. The Strib offered up numbers on five: its AM Update, PM Update, Breaking News, Vikings and Twins. Here is the per-delivery data:
PM Update: 49,084 sent; 9,024 opened; an 18.4 percent open rate.
Vikings: 46,833 sent; 6,241 opened; 13.3 percent open rate.
Breaking News: 39,908 sent; 7,353 opened; 18.4 percent open rate.
AM Update: 36,967 sent; 6,495 opened; 17.6 percent open rate.
Twins: 2,668 sent; 695 opened; 26 percent open rate.
Marketing mavens: Is that a great or awful open rate?
Text alerts: The Strib emitted 16,669 weather forecasts; 2,552 severe weather warnings; 9,721 sports scores; and 5,002 Vikings updates. I hope any text-message subscriber had the unlimted plan.
Facebook Fans: Social media makes the ABC report! As of Dec. 17, 2009 the Strib had 4,103 unduplicated fans; 2,476 for startribune.com and 1,902 for Star Tribune sports. What, no Twitter??
By the way, the report also lists circulation for two less-traditional Strib print properties. The Vita.mn weekly entertainment freebie is good for 50,000 copies, and there are 666,668 copies of the free ad circular Twin Cities Values distributed via newspaper and shared mail.
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Comments (10)
David,
18 percent is a respectable e-mail open rate.
Strange indeed that they didn't include Twitter. How many retweets.
My question is what was the impetus for including this info? I find it hard to believe they wouldn't already be providing this to advertisers.
David - The Strib does have individual journalists who use Twitter (i.e. Myron Medcalf). Twitter probably isn't a good vehicle for the Strib as a whole; you gotta have a niche (like Myron's gopher basketball beat).
Is there a link to the Report?
Doug - ABC is supposed to be "cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die" data for the business folks, so it's an extra layer of assurance for advertisers, potentially. There have been ABC circ scandals in the past, but those papers were publicly shamed and it cost them $$$.
Ken -- will post a copy of the PDF this afternoon if I can.
David,
I'd love to see a breakout of these metric categories and how they have impacted both the offline readership and online Startribune web properties. A trendline would be icing on the cake!
Here's another resource for e-mail open rates:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2395/all-about-email-open-rates/
The Vikings open rate surprised me (as being low) and I was also surprised how few people subscribe to their Twins newsletter.
The Strib also finally started posting to their Facebook page after a two-month lapse: http://www.facebook.com/startribunefb?ref=ts
I'm curious if there were separate stats for Vita.mn (the Web site).
Drew - According to the report, the Strib has 29 domains, including vita.mn and the mobile site m.startribune.com, but does not break out individual metrics in the ABC report.
Interesting report. Do they provide unique # of commenters for the year?
The 26% open rate is good. I disagree that 18% is respectable considering that readers asked for the e-newsletters. If I were a managing editor, I'd consider the extra, putzy work required to produce them and whether they're worth it or not. They've lost their cool factor, perhaps.
Strib network might be gourging in the techo sphere but of all the news I link to it takes the longest dl time and screen refresh pace of all. I'm actually becoming quite inpatient with the stablity and I have cable service. Over kill in my view.