AMAA releases first set of data for new website auditing service
The Audited Media Association of Australia (AMAA) has released the first set of numbers for its new website measurement service with youth orientated website Pedestrian.TV topping the audit body’s December survey.
The AMAA last month launched the new website measurement service which it said would provide media agencies with a range of audited metrics to “bring more rigour” to online figures.
According to the December audit number Pedestrian.TV topped the survey with 42,300 average daily unique browsers (UBs). Entertainment website Timeout came second in the survey with 34,856 UBs while rival Broadsheet had 9,422 UBs.
CEO of the AMAA Paul Dovas said he was pleased with the release of the first numbers adding more publishers would be joining the survey in coming months when they had addressed issues around auditing sites with the autorefresh feature.
“We’re thrilled with this first take and we looking forward to releasing more in the coming months. There are a lot more websites that have been tagged and are being measured and will be in the survey in the January period,” said Dovas. “We are also looking forward to introducing additional reporting on autorefresh, numbers on devices and also some numbers on video metrics later on this year.”
Dovas acknowledged the AMAA has yet to sign any of the largest Australian publishers, many of whom have objected to the AMAA’s rules on autorefresh.
“The larger publishers have cited our position on autorefresh as an issue but I think when we introduce transparency on autorefresh we will remove that hurdle and there will be one less excuse not to audit,” he said. “We would like to bring the big publishers on board and have them lead by example.”
The CEO of AMAA also added the number of websites in the survey, currently at around 30, would be increased next month but declined to specify which publishers would be joining the survey.
The AMAA’s audit discounts autorefreshing, arguing it is difficult to tell what is human activity refreshing the page and what is website automatically updating the page. None of the websites in the current survey use autorefresh.
Last month’s launch of the AMAA’s new online audit service, which is conducted by measurement company Comscore, drew criticism from rival Nielsen with Monique Perry head of media at Nielsen, which is the IAB approved metric, calling on the industry to support Nielsen as the approved metric rather than “muddying the water with mistruths”.
In the media and marketing space, Mumbrella had an average of 9,422 UBs a day, while creative industry blog Campaign Brief had an average of 2,298 UBs a day. Yaffa Publishing, publisher of AdNews, and Cirrus Media, publisher of B&T, do not participate in website auditing.
Nic Christensen
I’m yet to look at all the data, but there doesn’t seem to be any real big changes outside of seasonality. Net gain … ummm.
Though I did note that Mumbrella was lower than Feb-Sep 2013 but up around a half on December last year. Will need a few more months data to get a grip on this.
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