Fairfax stops releasing monthly data on its digital progress
Fairfax Media has dropped its monthly updates to the market on its progress on its various digital platforms after little more than a year.
At the time of launching the report, Fairfax said that its metro media audience report was part of “an ongoing commitment to giving key industry stakeholders the most transparent and holistic set of metrics for its mastheads across all platforms.”
However, the publisher has now stopped sharing the monthly reports with the market, meaning a string of metrics not covered by its quarterly audits are no longer available.
The report was the brainchild of former Fairfax Metro boss Jack Matthews who departed in April.
Curious. The whole business strategy is supposed to rest on the total audience. Given the serious doubts about how that turns to cash you wiuld think Fairfax would be extremely careful with the measurement and confidence in it.
I am very confused about how the release of EMMA will act as a like for like replacement for what Fairfax have been releasing in this report. The release of EMMA is still 6-10 months away, in itself an almost unbelievable timescale. EMMA may give us a better understanding of the likely audience duplication between platforms, which will almost certainly be huge. To some extent the desire for a ‘total audience’ figure is meaningless, apart for as a PR message and potentially counterproductive when it is clear how large the duplication is. The platforms are invariably sold and measured independently, so there is little intrinsic commercial value.