Mumbrella traffic jumps by 20% in August while Campaign Brief recovers from July low
August saw Mumbrella deliver its third highest average daily audience in its history, according to newly released data from the Audited Media Association of Australia.
According to the independently audited numbers, Mumbrella averaged 14,367 daily unique browsers – up 20.9% on the previous month.
The number is nearly three times that of Mumbrella’s nearest audited trade press rival B&T, which reached an average of 5,872 daily UBs.
And it was almost five times that of the third audited trade press title, Campaign Brief, which was 3,032. However, this also represented something of a recovery for Campaign Brief, whose average UBs had crashed by 35% in July to 2,149 – the lowest since the title began auditing in 2010.
Mumbrella also dominated the media and marketing trade press for number of page impressions delivered – clocking up 850,842 – the best since January’s “Jacketgate” story which helped deliver Mumbrella its biggest traffic of 2017.
B&T had around half that number of page impressions, delivering 433,176. Campaign Brief had 209,156.
The other main industry title, AdNews, does not submit its figures for audit, but the last time it publicly shared its internal analytics, it claimed 145,956 monthly page impressions.
The AMAA numbers:
Since Mumbrella joined the audit in 2009, it has topped the numbers among the trade press every single month.
Elsewhere on the AMAA web measurement service, Hot Tomato Broadcasting Company’s MYGC.com.au had the highest number of daily UBs, recording 59,738 in August. The site also topped the list for page impressions, delivering 2.7m.
Grazia, now published by independent media house Grace Publishing, reached an average of 6,208 UBs, up 37.9% for the month.
Star Observer, which has been writing extensively about the marriage equality plebiscite, saw a big jump in its UBs, up by 142% to 6,812.
That looks like a bit of a mysterious jump in traffic for b&t a few months ago. How on earth might they have suddenly grown their database? I’m sure it was by entirely legitimate means.
Perhaps they can get some advice from ADMA on industry best practice in email list management
Campaign Brief’s numbers were up because it had a paid Facebook ad – Sponsored Post – running for its Same Sex Marriage Poll.
How do you double your traffic in one month?
Some ways:
* Double your email database as suggested above (but where do you how do you do that in one hit without it being dodgy and someone knowing something…email databases only usually double if a deal of some sort has been done, and usually given ACMA laws that has to be announced)
* Change your platform functionality in some way and not tell anyone what you did. Nothing unusual here in terms of industry practice, no one ever does usually Eg, B&T is endless scroll. Say you put in a pageview every few scrolls to represent page clicks that the search engines can’t filter out. You could argue that this is actually just equalising page views with your competitor who isn’t endless scroll. (might have happened except the stats are showing double the users too , which points to something else)
* Change your platform and do all sorts of jiggedy jig to get the effect of doubling traffic including users (most likely. again, could be representative or it might not be. Nothing in the audit can tell you though)
* Strike it lucky on a google algorithm – not likely as it doesn’t synch to anything major in search algorithm changes, there aren’t major changes these days usually, and it’s not like B&T does original copy that would score such a change.
The one thing we know is this is not a sudden doubling of interest in the content on the site. All things being equal , it doesn’t happen that way.This change is purely technical in origin or the email newsletter has actually doubled.
Perhaps this new traffic is justified, perhaps it isn’t. Who knows. There is no audit or publisher information provided so you can decipher what happened and whether it’s a sensible change that reflects actual use or a form of fraud. Which is why digital measurement in the way Neilsen is reporting here is largely garbage.
When stuff like his happens, does the auditor ask any questions? No. B&T will be singing from on high, they’re now catching Mumbrella fast. Really? Well, it’s audited guys. And we’re all for digital auditing. Right?
‘B&T is catching Mumbrella fast’ is the more appropriate story here, if you believe digital auditing is sound.
Generous point of view from Eponymous,
Pattern of B&t’s jump (too big to be an algorithm change), then steady decline since looks far more
Like they acquired a database from somewhere, and in the months since all the people
Who didn’t ask for it have been gradually
Been unsubsribing
That’s great news & well done…. Unique quality content will always come through and that’s what you guys deliver…..
Not sure who is eponymous but from the style of writing I have a pretty good idea.
Total kudos to Mumbrealla for publishing the ramblings on eponymous – I spent many a meeting with the said individual and it was that “ramblings”…At a point the ramblings being delusional….
B&T who…When was the last time anyone opted into their lists
It feels to me that Mumbrella has been running more stories in its email than in prior months. Surely more stories equates to more traffic. And it can all be done with no change in the readers
I’d guess at maybe something like 20% more stories but I couldn’t be arsed going back and checking.
And as for calling Monthly UBs “audience” that metric was shown to be pretty much rubbish over a decade ago, and discredited around the start of this decade.
Not something I’d hang my hat on if I was trying to promote my digital credentials.