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Fairfax admits accidentally overstating its numbers on app usage

Fairfax Media has admitted it released inflated data for the number of pages being used on its smartphone apps when it launched its new Metro Media Audience Reports to the market three months ago.

The problem came to light after Mumbrella noticed what appeared to be a 50% drop in the number of pages viewed by people on the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s smartphone apps when new data was published on Friday.

The company had claimed that in the last quarter of 2011 it had delivered a monthly average of 3.3m page views to the SMH phone apps and 2.7m to The Age’s phone apps.

By contrast, the last quarter saw those numbers apparently fall to 1.7m and 1.5m, which would have been a drop of 48% and 44%.

However, a spokeswoman for Fairfax Media today told Mumbrella that the original data three months ago was wrong – rather than releasing a monthly average, the three months had been mistakenly added together and that page views on the platform had in fact grown this time round.

There was no immediate word on whether the original data would be re-released

The data also reveals a slight fall in video streams. The spokeswoman said that this was mainly because the corresponding quarter had been a big one for video-friendly news stories.

Meanwhile, the growth of page views on tablet apps was significant in the last quarter, while growth of overall monthly online audience has slowed, the data suggests.

The company released its mastheads report from January to March on Friday, shortly after Audit Bureau of Circulations data revealed that the company had seen the biggest percentage falls in the print circulation of its mastheads in the copmapny’s history.

Fairfax started releasing its quarterly reports on audience across all platforms of smh.com.au and theage.com.au at the start of the year in a bid to give a picture that went beyond just print.

Web audience

In the first set of numbers released three months ago, the monthly unique audience of smh.com.au had leapt from 2.459m a year before to 2.835m, although the methodology for measuring audience also changed during that period.

But in the latest quarter, smh.com.au’s audience only grew to 2.889m – an increase of less than 2%.

Meanwhile, theage.com.au increased by 5% to 1.706m.

The time per user per month fell from an average of 47 minutes to 44 minutes for smh.com.au and dropped slightly to just below 46 minutes for theage.com.au.

Monthly page views increased by about 7% for smh.com.au and  4% for theage.com.au.

Video

Video is seen as an important source of growth for online companies because advertisers are willing to pay a relatively high cpm for preroll ads.

Monthly video streams for smh.com.au grew by just 0.5% to 6.756m compared to the previous quarter. The numbers also show that in the space of a quarter, smh.com.au went from growth in video streams of 26% on a year before to just 12% annual growth.

The drop coincides with Fairfax allowing logged in users to turn off autoplay video.

Meanwhile theage.com.au actually went backwards with video streams falling from 4m to 3.8m, a fall of 5.5%.

Annualised growth for theage.com.au’s video streams fell from 15.1% a quarter ago to 9% in the last quarter.

Mobile traffic

Mobile daily unique browsers on smh.com.au grew from 158,985 to to 175,770, an increase of 10.5% for the quarter. The year on year growth slowed from 126.3% in the last quarter to 102%.

Similarly, theage.com.au grew by 15% quarter on quarter while annualised growth fell from 84% to 77%.

Monthly mobile page views were up by just over 15% for smh.com.au and just below 14% for theage.com.au.

Phone apps

Smartphone apps for the Sydney Morning Herald saw 24,762 free downloads in the last quarter, taking it to 99,746 to date.

The Age delivered 23,575 downloads, taking it to 85,280 to date.

As discussed above, there is no reliable comparison available for monthly page views on smart phones because of the erroneous data of three months ago.

Tablet apps

The number of free tablet app downloads of the SMH in the quarter was 41,847. The Age put on another 40,656 downloads.

However, tablet based monthly page views rose from 33m to 46m for the SMH and from 29m to 40m for The Age.

Daily unique tablet users rose from 26,684 to 34,665 for SMH and from 22,780 to 29,768 for The Age.

Fairfax Metro Media Audience Report Jan-March 2012 (click to enlarge):

fairfax metro audience report jan march 2012

Fairfax Metro media Ausience Report Oct-Dec 2011 (click to enlarge):

fairfax media metro report q4 2011

Fairfax Media is currently working to persuade the market that it has a strategy in place to make good its decline in print audience with new digital users. Earlier today Fairfax Media’s share price dropped to 66c, the lowest in the company’s history.

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