The Punch celebrates first birthday, but Crikey keeps its lead

June 1, 2010 10:46

The Punch, News Ltd’s push into online comment and aggregation, has hit its first anniversary locked in a two-horse race with Crikey to lead the segment.

In a posting today, the site says that it has generated 111,000 reader comments during its first year.

According to Nielsen Market Intelligence, The Punch is reaching slightly fewer unique daily browsers than Crikey, although the lead has swapped back and forth over the last 12 months.

May 1 to May 30 saw The Punch averaging 12,746 daily users to Crikey’s 15,042.

Meanwhile, according to Nielsen, the independent commentry site New Matilda, which announced last week that it was to close later this month, averaged 2,093 daily unique domestic visitors.

Other sites such as Fairfax’s National Times and the ABC’s The Drum are not covered by the Nielsen data.

When monthly page impressions are taken into account, Crikey has a big lead over The Punch – with 2,568,507 impressions from May 1 to May 30 to The Punch’s 837,950. Crikey averages more than twice as many page views per session as The Punch – perhaps implying a more aggressive autorefresh policy.

The previous year has seen the lead for average unique daily browsers switch back and forth bettween Crikey and the Punch.

The Punch went ahead of Crikey for daily unique browsers in July and August, but since last September, shortly after Crikey revamped its website, it has led.

June 2, 2.15pm Update: In reply to the comment thread below, this is Nielsen’s data for Online Opinion:

Nielsen_online_opinon

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He now writes industry newsletter Unmade - subscribe at unmade.media

topics ABC Crikey Media National Times New Matilda online The Drum The Punch

Comments: 42

Jason Wilson 1 Jun 10

What about On Line Opinion?

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 1 Jun 10

Hi Jason,

Average daily domestic UBs 2,112, so about the same as New Matilda.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Jason Wilson 1 Jun 10

Thanks Tim – apologies in retrospect for the abruptness of the initial comment, btw – LOL.

User ID not verified.

Paul Montgomery 1 Jun 10

These sites get a lot of coverage for not being in the top 500 in Australia.

User ID not verified.

Claire 1 Jun 10

Paul – I fail to see why that is relevant.

Sites like Crikey are important as an often lone voice of honesty and opinion in an otherwise dry and dull media landscape.

Their ability to get inside what is really happening in Australian politics & media makes for intelligent and informed reading.

It’s certainly more interesting than a lot of the fluff written daily in our major metros

User ID not verified.

Andy 1 Jun 10

Actually – I agree with @Paul.

Crikey aside, which I do agree has had relevance in the media landscape…

…800,000 PI’s for the month and 12,000 UB’s per day for The Punch?!

With all the marketing & cross promotion through the News Network, you’d have to say that’s a very poor return.

Wow, am staggered by those numbers. That is hardly a blip on the radar…

User ID not verified.

Megan 1 Jun 10

If ‘Crikey!’ and ‘The Punch’ are competing, why do ‘Crikey!’ always link to pieces in ‘The Punch’ and waste so much of their readers’ time discussing it?

If I wanted Murdoch’s filthy electrons in my computer I’d go there myself, there’s a reason I deliberately avoid Murdoch.

You’d think ‘Crikey!’ was the ABC the way they cross-reference everything to News Ltd.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 1 Jun 10

Hi Megan,

Probably for the same reason that The Punch sometimes links to good articles from the likes of Fairfax – one way to succeed is to give your readers good links to content wherever it may be, even if it means sending them out of your own network.

Obviously it’s then up to the reader to decide if they like that content.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Megan 1 Jun 10

Thanks Tim,

As is obvious, I never give a click to ‘the Punch’.

Do they cross-reference and link to ‘Crikey!’ with about the same frequency?

Cheers.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 1 Jun 10

Hi Megan,

It tends to be The Punch’s style to stick with the big guys – so mainly (in my myopic view) Fairfax & The ABC, plus similar behemoths overseas.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Paul Montgomery 1 Jun 10

That’s the problem though, isn’t it Tim? Mumbrella is stuck in the same tired old loop, the Fairfax/News nexus dominating all thought of online media, with Crikey as the exception that proves the rule. I wonder how many of the Top 100 Australian Blogs Index – very few of which ever get any coverage from Mumbrella – can boast more traffic than The Punch and Crikey. Alexa tells me Crikey and Mumbrella are basically neck and neck, though I’m sure TIm could give us more accurate numbers. Ironically, Mumbrella itself is #27 on that list and I can’t remember any coverage of the top 26 above them on this site.

http://blogpond.com.au/top-100.....ogs-index/

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 1 Jun 10

Hi Paul,

You may need to clarify a bit, as I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make. Could you perhaps explain?

This particular article happens to be about how The Punch is doing one year after launching, so it makes sense to look at other sites in the commentary/ opinion space.

If you’re looking for coverage of online audience more generally, the last time we gave some reasonably comprehensive coverage was perhaps this first quarter wrap-up: https://mumbrella.com.au/state-of-the-web-australias-online-traffic-22673

I’m not quite sure what your point is on the top 100 blog index – it appears you’re linking to something which is a more than a year old. (Using the same methodology now, it looks to me that Mumbrella would be placed about fifth in that list assuming none of the others had changed in that time, although I’m not sure what that would prove anyway).

I’d be surprised if any of those blogs do more domestic Australian traffic than Crikey or The Punch.

For what it’s worth, while I’m very happy with how we’re going, Crikey is well ahead of Mumbrella – you can’t always rely on Alexa. ( https://mumbrella.com.au/mumbrella-and-campaign-brief-both-see-growth-in-audited-online-traffic-27218 )

I’m curious about FanFooty’s traffic, by the way… I see you take ads, but you don’t seem to have your traffic audited, as far as I can tell. Any reason?

Apologies if I’ve missed the main point you’re making. Fell free to put it in more detail.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Punchy 1 Jun 10

it’s the battle no advertiser could care less about

User ID not verified.

ac 1 Jun 10

Maybe Paul is talking about the tail wagging the dog; sites like The Punch getting lots of coverage but still having little or no appeal by the numbers versus sites without a marketing budget or massive cross-sell opportunities wishing they could get the same coverage? (maybe like his site?). fan footy is great, BTW and do some clever things around the dreamteam phenomenon

but then again, maybe its like the band down at the Tote who’s better than shannon noll but don’t know how to get press?

maybe its just life…what about me, you know…i was twittering away before i crashed into the corner shop…

User ID not verified.

Megan 1 Jun 10

Sorry Tim,

I’m just a “consumer” of “media”.

Old fashioned “citizen” in a “democracy” who has a quaintly old-fashioned idea about the role of the news media/fourth-estate in a properly functioning democracy. I’m a bit of a stickler for honesty, so I have quite a problem with Murdoch’s News Ltd.

For all the faults I’m more than willing to point out with “Crikey!”, they at least make a fist of genuine honesty in covering news. The ABC used to be some kind of paragon (comparatively).

To my mind comparing “Punch” to “Crikey!” is like comparing “snot” to “handkerchief” – occupying the same space but serving completely different purposes.

My criticism of “Crikey!” is that they (and the ABC) should distance themselves from News rather than cosy up.

Cheers.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

That may be the case, ac. I guess that’s the nature of the long tail (which seems appropriate in a tail-wagging-the-dog metaphor).

But in a situation where there are hundreds of smaller (but I’m sure, excellent) sites but very few with a decent sized audience one tends to write the stories about where the domestic Australian audience actually is, unless there’s an interesting enough reason to do otherwise.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

And Megan,

I’d argue that The Punch perhaps deserves to be judged by its content rather than its ownership. Of all the Murdoch media, I’d say they’re the outlet that feels least like it’s toeing a News Ltd line.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

The point I was trying to make is that The Punch, Crikey etc get a lot of oxygen on this site purely due to the MSM connections of their staff – the old mates network. People like Darren Rowse, Duncan Riley and Yaro Starak are not part of old media, yet they should be given respect and coverage for having superior traffic numbers. Not to mention they built their properties out of nothing, instead of leeching off brand recognition of older titles. Could Penbo have done any better than New Matilda if he didn’t have traffic shovelled in from News sites? As far as Mumbrella is concerned, it’s as if self-starters like Darren and Duncan don’t exist while self-aggrandisers like Penbo and Eric Beecher get the pixels.

As far as traffic goes, Inquisitr did 6 million page views last month so that’s still comfortably twice that of Crikey. I don’t know the others, but I’d say Mumbrella would still be in the 20s, as everyone’s traffic has grown along with yours. Your model is based on niche targeting anyway, so that’s not an issue.

Admittedly, sites like those of Darren and Duncan are global in appeal so you could argue that Mumbrella ignores them because it is looking at the Australian market. There are enough Australian-focused blogs in that list, however, to back up my point. Just because they don’t pay Nielsen to get listed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them the props they deserve.

I don’t need any coverage myself, I’m not talking about FanFooty here. On auditing, why don’t you ask the five biggest publishers in Australia why they’re not audited, and why they rely on auto-refresh to shamelessly juke their stats on just about every page as Ben Shepherd has been banging on about? I don’t need to pay Nielsen a five-figure sum for something that advertisers don’t seem to care about anyway. (And before you ask, yes FF does have a 5-minute auto-refresh on live AJAX scoring pages, which represent 60% of page views, though I would argue that they are justified given that users are looking at those pages constantly.)

User ID not verified.

ac 2 Jun 10

haha – seems like i was off the mark given the latest post…not happy paul?

thanks tim, love your stuff. my reference was more to the independent sites getting a stack of traffic, but no coverage – which is understandable unless they can get the word out.

from experience, i know that nielsen charge FAR TOO MUCH for their simple reporting, and yet – our ROI has been worth the pain, albeit, I am pissed that they have basically cornered the market there…however, it does get the independents onto the charts.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Thanks for your answer, Paul. I think you may have also answered your own point though.

In the main, I tend to write about the sites with the most relevance for Mumbrella’s readership, which would be the ones that enjoy a big Australian audience that advertisers might look to reach.

I think, for instance, that Darren’s ProBlogger is an excellent and useful site. It’s global in reach though, and while it’s an Australian success story because he happens to be based in Victoria ,on the whole his audience is not a mainstream Australian one.

It’s also hard to write about traffic to these sites when the information is not reliably available in the first place. (If Duncan from Inquisitr could let us know his Australian traffic, I’d certainly be interested to hear the answer).

The “old mates network” argument is lazy and inaccurate. For the record I’m not mates with any of the people on Crikey or the Punch, and indeed have probably crossed paths with no individual from any of those titles more than three times in total.

You ask whether Penbo would have done as well without the News Ltd resources? Of course not – but advertisers make decisions about where to place ads based on where the audience actually is, not what sites deserve it. I’m reporting those numbers.

BTW, for smaller sites, it’s not “a five figure sum” to Nielsen. In many cases its a low three figure sum to the ABA for exactly the same service.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Anonymous 2 Jun 10

“It’s as if self-starters like Darren and Duncan don’t exist while self-aggrandisers like Penbo and Eric Beecher get the pixels.”

Aren’t you the one playing the old mates network in yuor comments, Monty?

It sounds like your old mates network is Darren & Duncan, Monty. I’ve certainly seen you chatting away to Duncan on Twitter, even tonight. You talk about them as your friends on your blog too.

Eric Beecher is independent and does a damn good job keeping Crikey going. That’s independent publishing. or should he be discounted just because he once worked for mainstream media?

But you did too, didn’t you?

User ID not verified.

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

Getting fully audited would be a five figure sum to me Tim, seeing as I am averaging 3.3M page views per week this season on FanFooty, and last time I checked the fee structure is based on page views. In fact, it would have been a five-figure sum last year, and FF traffic is up 60% year-on-year.

Fair enough on the other points, I’ve had my say.

User ID not verified.

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

Anonymous (if that is your real name…):

Yes, Duncan is my mate, but I don’t run an industry blog like Tim does to give him a leg up. I guess I was a bit out of line accusing Tim directly, so for that I am sorry, but the point I was trying to make is that Penbo and Beecher are defined as the big names of the online publishing industry time after time on blogs like Mumbrella, with little respect for the quiet achievers who never worked at Fairfax or News.

I’ve never worked for a newspaper or one of the big two, my history is in small niche business mags.

User ID not verified.

Megan 2 Jun 10

Hi Tim,

I suppose the problem is with our respective definitions of what we mean by “judged”.

I “judge” everything touched by Murdoch – from the criminally compromised ‘News Of The World’, to ‘Fox’ to ‘The Australian’ to ‘The Herald Sun’ to ‘The WSJ’ and so on – as being adverse to truth and the proper function of the media in a free, democratic society.

Just because Murdoch’s operatives at ‘The Punch’ have created a “feel” that they least toe the Murdoch line, doesn’t mean that they are less tainted or more virtuous. And, anyway, ‘virtue’ isn’t the issue.

It’s them trying to claw back that “feel” you refer to. That’s why they are all over the ABC and ‘Crikey!’ (in my opinion).

I suspect that the influence they believe they peddle is worth a lot less to their advertisers than they are saying (and charging).

Cheers.

User ID not verified.

Jane from Fairfax Digital. 2 Jun 10

Hi Tim, sorry I am a bit late to the dance here. Not sure if this will add value to the debate, but I thought it might be of interest.

National Times is in MI under the ‘All Sites’ reporting section. It is not listed under Brand or within the News category as it conflicts against Nielsen’s business rules around the branding of sites. (ie. The 4 masthead sections do not carry NT as their dominant brand). You may not realise this as it’s unusual to run reports out of ‘All Sites’.

The roll-up of the 4 masthead sections and the standalone National Times site is consistently above 1 million UB’s and 4 million PI’s.

Regards, Jane

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Thanks Jane – that adds useful context.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Punchy 2 Jun 10

comparing the national times to crikey or punch is way off … tell me how many people go to national times via the national times front page FD?

distributing network traffic to national times is sort of misleading …

User ID not verified.

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

BTW to clear up an earlier issue, Duncan tells me this morning the Inquisitr’s daily uniques for May were 36,681. About the same as FanFooty’s, coincidentally.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Hi Paul,

Is that number globally or domestic only?

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

Both are globally. The Inquisitr has somewhere around 5% Australian traffic from vague memory. FanFooty is the opposite, 96% Australian.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Which’d be less than 2000 daily unique domestic browsers for The Inquisitr, if it is 5%, Paul.

A great global success story, but not a big player in the Australian market.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Graham Edward Young 2 Jun 10

Not sure where you are getting your figures from, and it would help if you were consistent. Here you say that NM got around 1500 impressions in April. https://mumbrella.com.au/political-website-new-matilda-to-close-hit-by-tight-ad-market-26747. Yet above it’s jumped to 2093 – that’s a 33% difference. Then you claim that OLO is on 2112 average UBs. Not sure how you calculate that, but I checked our Google Analytics for Monday and OLO had 3748 UBs and our Forum 661, which fits with my sense from other things that I know that we are more than twice the size of NM.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your questions. I am being consistent, but I think you may be misunderstanding the differences between domestic and global audiences, and month on month comparisons.

I think you’ve also mixed up page impressions with unique browsers.

We didn’t say 1500 page impressions for April for New Matilda. We said an average of 1500 daily unique domestic browsers. At the time of writing the story about New Matilda’s closure that you refer to, May wasn’t over, so we used the full month figures for April which were indeed about 1500.

Now it’s June, the full month figures for May are available. The number of daily unique browsers for New Matilda did indeed rise by about a third – driven, I suspect, partly by increased interest in them at the end of the month because of the announcement of their plans to shut up shop.

As to the difference to your scores – Google Analytics offers a count of overall impressions including both global and Australian visitors. Nielsen offers domestic audience only – the difference can be important to advertisers.

So for instance, Nielsen says that on Tuesday I had 7731 unique domestic browsers and delivered 21,582 page impressions. Google Anaytics says I had 9,171 unique visitors and 24,319 impressions.

Both are probably close enough to correct – but are measuring too different things.

For what it’s worth (and I’m starting to sound like a stuck record on this), I’d advocate signing up to an ABA audit. For a site of your size it would be inexpensive, but it will give clarity to your figures that advertisers would be able to rely on.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Zac 2 Jun 10

I think the point Paul is trying to make is that there are many other quality Australian sites out there which fly below the radar. FanFooty is a good example; very strong AU traffic but not on the press radar.

Perhaps the suggestion is that Mumbrella could focus its sharp lens on some of the other independent Australian sites as well. This seemed to be his point.

For the record, TheRoar.com.au averages over 15,000 comments and 200 fan-submitted articles a month.

Graham Edward Young 2 Jun 10

Hi Tim, I’ve got a reasonable grasp on these things. I’m certainly not mistaking unique visitors for page views. Thanks for the explanation on the NM UBs. That makes sense.

OLO is audited – by Nielsen. But the reports that I receive don’t give me easy access to UB information. I do however have page views. OLO’s Australian audience is somewhere around the 80% mark, so it doesn’t explain the difference between what you credit us with and what Google does. Nielsen figures are consistent with Google, to within a reasonable tolerance.

You might forgive me for being a bit pedantic, but circulation figures are the lifeblood to a publisher, and having an audience on an influential site being told that the size of one of your smaller competitors is the same as yours when you know that is not true is an issue that needs to be dealt with as it reflects on the quality of what you offer advertisers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought into the NM closure. But I think it is important for the sake of everyone that we analyse these things accurately, rather than relying on spin from the publisher who is going out of business.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your comments.

Point by point…

1. You are indeed mistaking unique visitors for page views.

You posted a link to our previous story saying “Here you say that NM got around 1500 impressions in April.”

We didn’t. We said: “in April New Matilda averaged just over 1500 domestic daily unique browsers”.

Browsers, not page impressions.

2. We’re not “relying on spin from the publisher”. Those numbers didn’t come from New Matilda, they came from me logging into Nielsen Market Intelligence and looking them up directly, just as I did for your numbers.

3. On auditing, if you have doubts about your Nielsen numbers, why not get the ABA to audit them and check that all tags are applied properly – the ABA’s Alexx Cass presented at our metrics event and made the point that sometimes they uncover issues that actually move the numbers up.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

lol crikey! 2 Jun 10

Oh Graham – how embarrassment?!

User ID not verified.

Graham Edward Young 2 Jun 10

Tim, just to take your points.,

1. I used the wrong word in my comment but that was a slip, I was referring to the right concepts. Not confused at all, as demonstrated by my correct assessment of percentages.

2. I didn’t say you were relying on spin from the publisher. I said that it was important that we analyse these things properly and don’t rely on spin. Most of the coverage that I have seen does. rely on spin from the publisher.

3. I don’t have any problems with Nielsen, and never said I did, and I’m confident that our site stats are what I say they are.

Graham

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 2 Jun 10

Thanks for that, Graham,

While you may be confident that your site stats on Nielsen are what you say they are, I’m afraid they don’t seem to be.

I’ve just added a screengrab at the end of the story above, which shows exactly what Nielsen says. It says 2140 daily UBs.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

Graham Edward Young 2 Jun 10

Interesting picture Tim, but it doesn’t square with what Nielsen sends us I’m afraid.

User ID not verified.

Paul Montgomery 2 Jun 10

Is that OLO Nielsen screengrab just showing Australian traffic? Perhaps that is the reason for the discrepancy.

User ID not verified.

mumbrella 3 Jun 10

Hi Paul,

That is, I’m sure, the main reason. It’s domestic traffic only.

Graham, that’s what the advertising market sees when they look you up on Nielsen market Intelligence. If you’ve got some third party data (not internal analytics) you want to email across to me that’s different to what we’ve shown above, I’ll be happy to publish that.

Cheers,

Tim – Mumbrella

The Punch celebrates first birthday, but Crikey keeps its lead

Social media highlights key election issues, foreshadows election result

New identity for Maurice Blackburn; launches first brand work with Howatson + Company

Hardhat's Dan Monheit and Curiious MD Michelle Schuberg to speak at Mumbrella Automotive Marketing Summit

M&C Saatchi accepts takeover bid for $549m, with Vin Murria gazumped

Why hyperautomation will never replace the human touch

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

SUBSCRIBE