Macquarie: We’ve closed Livenews because it wasn’t making enough money
Livenews.com.au – Macquarie Radio Network’s attempt to break into online news – was suddenly closed today.
Readers were informed with a brief note on the site’s home page saying: “The Macquarie Radio Network has decided to close down the livenews.com.au website. We thank you for your support and loyalty over the past couple of years.”
The company issued a statement to Mumbrella from sales director Mark Noakes saying: “MRN conducted a comprehensive business review at the beginning of 2009. It was determined that the company would pare back its digital commitment to assets that were a direct extension of the radio offering. Livenews.com.au was successful from a traffic perspective but this was not translating into incremental revenue that justified its costs of operation. The renewed focus on core assets is already reaping significant revenue rewards.”
According to Nielsen Market Intelligence, in August the site was averaging just under 11,000 unique browsers a day or just over 220,000 UBs a month. It recorded just over 2m page impressions last month.
MRN’s main media assets are Sydney talk radio stations 2GB and 2CH.
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Those UB numbers don’t look right, but shows how tough the australian market is when 2 million content pageviews/month are not much of anything.
businessspectator has been the big success story and interesting that thepunch looks like it will have quite a small regular sydneyish audience and be dependant on breakout content that gets picked up and reflected around the online echo chamber for periodic bigger numbers.
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those numbers make sense
2m PV’s would translate roughly at 50% sell through at around $20k a month in revenue max … and I would doubt they would have been at that level.
Key thing these operators need to focus on is exclusive audience … if they just reach the same people you can get elsewhere in similar contexts then what’s the point?
That’s the challenge for The Punch – can it bring new users to the NDM stable or is it pushing the same people across a new environment?
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It’s a real shame, I loved livenews.com.au!
Cheers,
Renai
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Just wanted to clarify the traffic numbers.
As at 15th Sept Uv’s daily average 20,000 and monthly is 400-500 UV’s & PI 2,000,000 to 3,000,000
This was a 30% increase on last month with only two staff.
News is competitive space but Livenews.com.au is a general news site and as such is not your typical 2GB audience, therefore not cannabalising radio audience.
If this were a new entrant to the media space you would expect them to struggle to sell inventory, but considering MRN is the number one radio station they have a very good exisiting sales force.
I suppose you cant teach an old dog new tricks and they couldnt sell digital advertising to the market.
So they decided to stick to there knitting.
Shame is, once Rupert starts charging for content a play like this would only benefit.
Now all those readers have scuttled off to the competitiors news services.
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full of rednecks and morons.. who would want to advertise on there?
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Page refresh is a wonderful thing for page impressions. Ask Fairfax and News….
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I am not at all surprised they shut it down. I understood from a past employee that at least half the UBs were international searches – hard to commercialise when your up against News and Fairfax.
Either way a general news site attracts $1 cpm – do the maths!
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I’m surprised by this move.
It also says a bit about picking the right content category to be in.
Business Spectator is employing 24 journalists on 264k UVs.
It was an open secret that this site was headed for the chopping block.
The radio stars hated it and the sales team did too.
And as far as management at the station is concerned, anything digital is no good.
They should have given it to Austereo, at least those guys would know how to sell and market it.
Half the staff got the chop in Janaury and by the end 2 journos were generating 500,000 plus UV’s. Someone should pick those guys up because they were doing a bloody good job.
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The purpose of any commercial business is to make money.
It didn’t.
End of story.
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Unfortunately this site and this digital business FAILED. It was given a big chance, three years to get it right and lots of money down the drain. They turned over a number of specialist digital sales reps who just kept quitting because the site was too hard to sell. In the end it must seem easier to blame management, radio stars and sales teams etc… the cold hard reality is that the site was mediocre at best and not a spot on the real competition. Regarding the above comments on Business Spectator – Apples and Oranges – a very different proposition run by people who understand their product – they didn’t have unlimited radio ads to pump them up either!
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