Opinion

Crikey’s attack on The Age’s audit would be more credible if it was audited itself

Regardless of where things end up, the media story of last week was Crikey’s publication of an internal memo from The Age which appeared to raise serious questions about the Fairfax newspaper’s audited numbers.

It was a good get. The Age may or may not have done something wrong under the rules of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. But there certainly appears to be a case to answer.

But here’s the thing. This is only a problem because Fairfax gets its numbers audited.

And guess who doesn’t?

Crikey.  

And guess why Crikey would fail the Audit Bureaux criteria for an online audit?

crikey_autorefresh mumbrella

Crikey source code

Because it uses autorefresh.

Now if this was anybody else, this wouldn’t even be commentworthy. Just about all the big publishers do it.

And in Crikey’s case, they’re better than some – at least the autorefresh is only every six minutes.

But the point is, it is Crikey – which many readers (myself included) look to for its independent voice and holding to account of the big players. That means its readers expect the highest possible standards of transparency in return.

(You may remember my similar frustration at my competitor AdNews which writes about audit and runs awards where only audited magazines can win, yet not only has no audited online numbers but even publishes market-misleading data.)

When somebody mentioned in our comment thread that Crikey’s not audited, I actually thought they were mistaken and had to check.

Crikey in fact does have its numbers listed on Nielsen MarketIntelligence, but not then audited by the Audit Bureaux. The relatively high number of page impressions (4.567m) last month compared to the number of sessions (1.024m) is the pointer to the steroid effect of autorefresh.

Crikey’s director of advertising Oliver Hinton tells me that the site only autorefreshes on the home page, where editorial content changes most frequently.

It’s an argument that many publishers make.

And while autorefresh is convenient for readers that if they happen to return to an already opened tab it’s got the latest stuff, it’s a massive disadvantage to advertisers who have potentially been paying for ads never seen by a human eye. That’s why media agencies are starting to boycott sites that do it.

In Crikey’s defence, the site frequency caps its ads at “four to five a day”, says Hinton, so that an advertiser’s ads aren’t burned through by a reader whose browser is open but they aren’t looking. There are many sites that don’t do that.

In addition, Crikey has identified technology that will allow it – and sister site Business Spectator which also autorefreshes on its home page – to only refresh the editorial. According to Hinton, this will be installed before Christmas, at which point, he said the sites will also apply for an ABA audit.  He adds: “Apart from doing it, we are at the very squeaky clean end of autorefresh.”

Which is fair enough. That indeed does put Crikey towards the more transparent end of things.

But some  sites have switched off autorefresh and are simply trusting the reader to hit refresh if they turn back to a page they opened earlier. They can then get their numbers audited.

Discussing the Fairfax claims this week, somebody from within the industry rather crossly described Crikey to me as “flinging shit around”. If I was Crikey I’d take that as a compliment. But I’d also make sure there was none that could be flung back.

Tim Burrowes

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