March 22, 2012: Fairfax Media Metro Division has launched another market-leading initiative today with the publication of the first monthly Fairfax Metro Media Audience Report.
The report marks the first time any publisher has provided the market with full monthly sales and other audience information for print and digital editions in Australia. It signals Fairfax Metro Media’s ongoing commitment to giving key industry stakeholders the most transparent and holistic set of metrics for its mastheads across all platforms.
Last month, Fairfax Metro Media launched the inaugural quarterly Media Audience Report, which will be published four times each year while the monthly edition released today will be issued 10 times a year.
“We’re leading the way in Australian news publishing once again,” CEO Fairfax Metro Media, Jack Matthews said.
“By providing media agencies, advertisers, shareholders and analysts a comprehensive and transparent set of figures on a monthly basis, they can get a complete, regular picture of how audiences are engaging with our major Metro Media brands.”
As Australia’s first publisher to commission detailed time-of-day web usage data for categories, brands and demographics, Fairfax Metro Media is working with agencies and marketers to provide insights about how web audiences differ throughout the day, and how they can feed into media planning and creative messaging.
In the first monthly Fairfax Metro Media Audience Report, data shows that The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are being consumed across the day in a range of digital formats, with significant differences between platform usage across different times of the day.
Mobile and tablet consumption is peaking early in the morning as people wake up and check the news over breakfast, before work and while commuting. Tablet usage of the
mastheads also sees uplift in the evening particularly in lifestyle, travel and entertainment content.
Website traffic is solid throughout the day and particularly strong during working hours.
Time-of-day usage for video viewing is being driven by format and length, with short snippets and updates following web site day time traffic, while longer online video formats are attracting a growing night time audience.
Although there is strong usage for both genders across the day, males make up a larger percentage of the online population overnight and early in the day (6am-9am) with the presence of females growing through the day and peaking at 6-9pm.
Between these times, 52 per cent of the total Fairfax Metro Media audience, which includes all verticals, is female, with the SMH and The Age websites capturing a 45 per cent female audience for this time period.
The report also shows that Fairfax Metro Media’s print mastheads have solidly outperformed the competition in readership, increasing market share in NSW and Victoria, and reinforcing their position as the most read printed newspapers among key target audiences.
“While the circulation figures might be about sales, what actually matters is the size of our audiences, the number of people engaging with our publications – and the figures show just how robust our share of those audiences is,” Matthews said.
“We are now presenting the market with the whole story about our mastheads and the fact we are successfully creating a truly multi-platform experience for our audiences”.
The new Fairfax Metro Media Audience Report metrics comprise unique audience, time on site per person per month, average monthly streams, M-site average monthly views, app downloads and tablet downloads, total masthead sales (print and digital) and net readership.
More metrics are expected to be introduced into future editions of the report to reflect the evolving media landscape and changes in media consumption patterns.
“We now have both quarterly and monthly reports that measure our audiences across every platform. No other publisher can claim to provide the market with this level of transparent reporting,” Matthews said.
/Ends
About Fairfax Media
Fairfax Media is Australasia’s leading media company with metropolitan, rural and regional publications and websites across Australia and New Zealand.
Fairfax Media publishes the highly respected metropolitan publications The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age along with, Australia’s leading online news websites smh.com.au, theage.com.au, Brisbanetimes.com.au and WAtoday.com.au. Other niche websites include the popular parenting website Essentialbaby.com.au and the youth site TheVine.com.au. The company has a large stable of successful websites in key vertical markets including New Zealand’s largest website, TradeMe.co.nz, RSVP.com.au, Stayz.com.au, InvestSmart.com.au, OMG, Australian Property Monitors, Commerce Australia, TenderLink and the recently acquired Occupancy. Fairfax Media also has a strong classified advertising business with print and online publications including: Drive, MyCareer, and Domain.
Media enquiries to:
Simon Lloyd
Access Public Relations
T: +61 2 9292 7003
M: 0424 470 923
E: simon@accesspr.com.autent
