Memo to PRs: this is why you should give me all your stories…
Please treat what follows as no more than an entirely partisan thought starter.
You see, I sometimes get asked by PRs or other organisations to justify why they should give stories to Mumbrella first. And there are only a handful of analytics sources I’ve been aware of that cover Australian media and marketing sites. Alexa is the obvious – and flawed – one.
However, there is one source – Google Ad Planner – which doesn’t seem particularly well known, despite having been around for more than a year. I only came across it this week and I’ve struggled to find much written about it on any Aussie sites, although I hope lots of smart media planners already use it.
Google Ad Planner is aimed at those who book online advertising, but it’s also a handy tool for anyone in PR. According to Google it uses sources “such as aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research”.
Alas Tim, despite the stats, you are stuck with one major problem – you’re an online media outlet.
Many PR people, like their journalistic colleagues, are still struggling to comprehend the online world and its importance. I constantly find myself having to chase PR people to send me their press releases or notify me of events – and I work for one of the biggest media companies in the country (and the dominant online player in my market segment).
And yet, the PR people still seem obsessed with living in the ’80s, taking print journos out to lunch in the hopes of a one-paragraph mention on page 17, while leaving online journos to chase them around just to get the basic information about whatever it is they’re spruiking.
I feel your frustration.
Hi Tim,
Great stats (well done!), and a good catalyst to a very worthy conversation regarding the value of online media vs heritage media for media relations professionals (referred here as PR).
Increasingly we are recognising the value and impact of online media when considering channels for clients/organisations. The instant impact, the suitability to new media (i.e. great for video content etc) and the increasing reach are all attractive for us.
I for one can’t wait for the day when we break up with Rupert et al, but it will take a lot to transition a whole ‘generation’ of media relations professionals to online media. After all, we’ve been working with the traditional press release as we know it for more than 100 years!
But, your article and ‘pitch’ is a great start – and anyone working in media, marketing and advertising that wants to get their story told should look at mumbrella as a target. It would be interesting to learn more about your audience segmentation though. Is it just industry people, or more of a cross section etc etc? As I believe most ‘PR’ would also consider this when looking to pitch their exclusive.
And further, in the interests of conversation, a lot of ‘PR’ don’t have access to lists of online media like we do for heritage media. I’m not sure if it’s just my account, by AAP certainly don’t offer me online targets? And yes, it’s largely up to us to research, but as we become aware of the marquee online media – from articles like this – we will start to understand and value them more!
Hi Tim, Yes agreed. Google’s Adplanner is one of the most under utilised tools for digital media agencies.
http://willscullypower.wordpre.....phic-data/
Couldn’t agree more. Sadly, FPP is right – the online landscape is still seen by some as a bit of an unknown. PR people included.
Up until recently, I was a journalist for a news website run by a major media company. When we first launched, it was impossible to get a PR person to return my calls. Sure, we were a new outlet… but it was ridiculous. When our hits exploded and our reputation soared, they were suddenly all over me. But exclusives etc were almost always offered to print journos first. We were left with the scraps.
I left the world of online news earlier this year to take a gig on the so-called “dark side” and still have a soft spot for bloggers and the like. It’s got nothing to do with my first-hand experience, but rather the knowledge that news sites are increasingly reaching a far wider audience than papers.
I’m amused by PR professionals who treat online as the poor cousin of newspapers. It’s outdated and part of the old world PR. Surely it’s not sustainable?
You forget to mention one key element – the quality of your audience. Who are they? Are they a relevant or meaningful audience to PR’s clients? That’s what many would like to see.
@ anonymous – I can vouch that the quality of mUmBRELLA’s audience is superb…
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
As well as the quality of audience question, as raised by ‘anonymous’, building brand takes time… and regardless of the stats PRs and readers alike will still make choices based on some element of familiarity, emotion and historical affiliation.
Great area for debate this: engagement levels are surely where it’s at. Although it kind of depends what kind of engagement people are engaging in.
As a PR person, Mumbrella is absolutely necessary. We have no PR industry publication and to be honest, PR gets only a small nod in marketing publications so any outlet (online or not) is massively important for getting the word out to the industry.
Fantastic article Tim. I think it probably comes down to how ‘engaged’ a PR is in social media and online conversations themself as to whether they think about online journalists when they’re putting together their strategies. Let’s face it, if you’re not involved, how can you possible understand its power of engagement?
I have just finished a phone conversation with a client about who we’ll be inviting to the launch event of their new service and, included in that list will be a number of online journalists.
Targeting the right people is the same online as it is in print. Understand the audience of an online publication and the sort of thing they want to read about before you contact them.
I think there will always be a place for print media but an incresing number of people get their information online from regular sources. I don’t think you can afford to ignore either one.
Google Ad Planner is the best of the free competitive intelligence tools.
Besides Alexa, there is also Compete.com and Quantcast.com in the mix, but those two are much more US-centric.
None of them are flawless, with Google Ad Planner’s biggest flaw being its reliance on Google toolbar/Chrome data. For example, use GAP to look at any big publishing website (Wikipedia, NYTimes, news.com.au, smh.com.au etc) – all of them are showing a major slide in daily visitor traffic which is quite bizarre when compared to actual internal data (ironically, I was discussing Google Ad Planner’s flaws on Twitter just today).
Hi Tim. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with the data you reported – not as in were the numbers reported correctly, but do they “feel right” to you as the bloke that runs the site.
Focussing just on Mumbrella you report 190,000 visits from 63,000 UVs doing 840,000 PVs over a month. If we look at these ratios we see:
– 3 visits per month per UV
– 4.4 PVs per visit
– 13.3 PVs per month per UV
Does this “feel right” to you?
* Do you think that with sending out Mumbrella three times per week (12 times per month) that only generates 3 visits per month? This would mean that 3/4 of your 12 newsletter emails go unread. Based on my sample of one that seems amazingly low.
* Do you think that only a little over 4 articles (PVs) are read per newsletter? I know I read every one of them. This coud be dragged down notifications which only generate 1 PV, so it could be spot on.
* Do you think that each unique visitor only generates 13 PVs per month – most of your newsletters contain around that number of stories alone.
* Does the 190,000 visits feel right to you looking at your server traffic? If so, maybe the 63,000 UVs is too high due to cookie deletion (which is what I suspect is happening).
As a further comment, we need to be careful looking at the relativity between titles. For example, Mumbrella has more articles per newsletter (around a dozen) but less mailings (12 per month) than AdNews ( 4-5 articles but 20 mailings) and B&T (20 mailings with 1 PV to the PDF unless people read each article click-by-click.
I’d like to know your thoughts as to which of the numbers pass the “well this makes sense to me” test.
@FPP I hear your comments and I for one have been pushing my clients to online publications but because some of them are hardly known the client doesn’t think they are as up-to-scratch as traditional media.
I do spend time working with clients to convince them otherwise and Tim’s article will be very useful in demonstrating to clients the reach they desire can be achieved online.
One thing though – I’d like to think that I am across all the various online publications but sometimes I’m not. Where can I find this sort of information as some of the media directories are out-of-date as soon as you receive them.
Any help from my PR peers would be very much appreciated.
I find this whole debate really interesting – as someone who works in PR for an arts organisation, we often get tickets requests from bloggers claiming to be “media.” Fantastic if they’ve got plenty of stats to back themselves up and have an enthusiastic readership – what about if they don’t?! Sometimes I’ve also ensured to include a particular blogger on an invite list (if I feel it would be relevant)and undersood that they’ve attended the performance, but never seen any feedback about it on their blog or anywhere else online – not so helpful!
I can see the obvious value of online coverage, but I also think one “old school” benefit of press coverage is that it is something physical you can hold and get delivered into the office and walk proudly into your superior’s office with. Consider “here you go, have a look at this in our daily paper, page 6 article and a large colour photo which takes up most of the page” as opposed to “look at this online piece *type in URL* *drum fingers waiting for it to load* *scroll down to find relevant piece*” and the blog/site name may not mean anything to a 50+ manager…I know this doesn’t have anything to do with potential audiences reached, but I do know (for us) what’s currently more favourably looked upon!
Hi John,
Thanks for those well reasoned points, and good questions. Some of the answers will shortly be available via Nielsen Market Intelligence, as we recently signed up to the ABA’s auditing service. I should respect the process and not discuss that element until our certificate is issued.
Another factor – the same for any site, I guess – is that the number of pages per visit varies between those who comes to us directly and those who find us by search. More for the former rather than the latter.
At present, those who arrive on Mumbrella via the email are a minority of our overall traffic (although we do get noticeable increases on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday when we send out the news email).
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I find it funny that Google Ad Planner can only guess stats even when some sites run their stats via Google Analytics. The ad planner has http://www.bannerblog.com.au a little mixed up but close to the money
https://www.google.com/adplanner/site_profile#siteDetails?identifier=bannerblog.com.au&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=false
Traffic is between 65-75k a month (around 50k uniques) but with 6 pages not 2.4. Also a time on site of 4:13 not 10 min!
Alexa is way more out of whack to the real stats.
I’d be interested if you can share you real stats a little more Tim. As 190,000 visitors is amazing. Kyle was really a gold mine 🙂
One stat you can grab easily is feed subscriptions on Google Reader (it’s not the best stat as no everyone uses it but still a good yard stick)
I notice Tim you have just 461 subscribers via Google Reader and post an average of 51 posts a week!
Actually it seems Google Ad Planner allows me to share my Google Analytics data for more realistic results. Sadly my real stats seem less impressive than the guesses
https://www.google.com/adplanner/#siteDetails?identifier=bannerblog.com.au&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=false
I would be careful using any stats from Goog, Compete, Alexa etc … they aren’t renowned for their accuracy nor their disclosure on how the figures are calculated …
Ben, totally agree, I’ve done some quick checks on a few client’s sites like Holden, and the data in inconsistantly wrong. By that I mean, some sites & stats are up and some are down.
Tim, the only thing you’re not including in the value comparison between Mumbrella & the others is that they also have print distribution?
John, good analysis, and my FEELING of the differences, is that B&T/Adnews get a different readership, more traditional, less ‘active’, and Mumbrella’s readers are more progressive and passionate about the industry.
I’ve been bringing Mumbrella up in presentations to clients (marketing managers) over the last couple of months and I ask the audience who reads or knows of Mumbrella, generally 1 in 20 people do.
Thanks Simon and I agree with your ‘reader analysis’. I think the big difference from a metrics perspective is that Mumbrella allows multiple points of contact and multiple times.
* B&T is generally email => download single PDF (though you can click on individual stores) and with no ‘return path’.
* AdNews is generally email => click on several stories for multiple PVs, again with no ‘return path’.
* Mumbrella is generally email => click on lots of stories (i.e. lots of PVs), with an easy ‘return path’ which then generates “repeat business” and I suspect lots of referall (emailing the URL to someone else who may be interested and also want to comment). The “notify me” option should be generating frequency amongst ‘commentors’, but if these ‘commentors’ are deleting cookies then they could be appearing as a new ‘unique’ … which is the problem with using cookies for audience measurement.
I’ve sent you media releases but you never print them!
Hi Liz,
I’m afraid that sending them doesn’t guarantee their publication. I’d be happy to give you some feedback on why they didn’t make it if that’s helpful.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Seems hard to believe that you don’t find me and my news irresistibly interesting. In any case the above extremely interesting and will definitely spend more time with Google Ad Planner. Have continued the rest of this chat via email.
Tim, Mumbrella is a great industry service and I, for one love visiting for a gander. However, as a PR person (with a marketing background), from what I can see most of your target audience are marketers/PR people – which for many of us PRy’s isn’t too useful unless our clients want industry kudos or are looking for another job and want to raise their own profile (and the 45+ folk just don’t get on-line despite our trying).
Hi PRChic,
Ah yes, I should be clear that I’m talking about the (many!) PRs targeting that particular trade audience, not consumer PRs.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Hey PRChic. So the 45+ folk just don’t get on-line despite you trying. You poor, poor thing … what with your marketing degree and everything … these folk must be REAL dumb.
Yeah, I can’t see how people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Steve Case, Jim Clark (you might have heard of him from when he married Kristy Hinze) could POSSIBLY understand on-line. Maybe they need to go get one of those “marketing degree thingies”.
To paraphrase Vint Cerf as he once famously said at a US conference … don’t tell my generation we don’t understand the Internet – we invented the damn thing. (I think he also threw in the PC and putting man on the moon, but that’s Vint for you).
John Grono – no need to be narky – been in the industry for 20 years and am very nearly in the group I mentioned as requiring remedial assistance.
Just saying that there are a lot of folks out there that want to stick with what they consider to be tried and true despite the best efforts of those of us that would like to move them forward.
Apologies for the narkiness PRChic, but EVERYONE knows that when you hit 45 you get narky … along with the instantaneous need for remedial assistance on this fandangled InterWeb thingie.
I suspect the reason many clients don’t want to “move forward” is that because what they are doing is genuinely “tried” and genuinely “true”. Remember, change for change’s sake is not always the best course of action … just like doing the same thing as last time and expecting a different result is the definition of marketing madness.
figures I saw today from Nielsen say People 35-49 account for 31% of people online – the highest in any segment older or younger……. so at least the people from 45-49 are watching
Love it when you do the research for us Tim.
I think the stats do show a fair bit of discrepancy between actual and reported, but generally the rankings appear to be quite on par with expectations.
From the sample perspective, I think it’s important not to dump marketing and media in the same bandwagon. Any marketer knows that the type of marketing most titles cover, is actually only what goes on in the marcomm arena – advertising, comms, PR, TVC-land etc. That’s a small subset of what marketing is actually about. There’s also a big difference in covering media in a journalism sense and then in an agency sense. The reason why I’m being captain obvious? Because any good media relations or PR practitioner seeking publicity knows that. It’s not about the numbers, but rather the fit for the publication and the medium. They also know that exclusives are tricky, and risk putting other outlets offside for the slight chance something ‘might’ run in a certain publication. ‘All or nothing’ is tricky, and sure clients know they can’t get all, but they certainly don’t want nothing in return for their activities, so it can actually be wise to play it safe and keep everyone happy.
On the case of advertisers, in the B2B arena, it’s not always about eyeballs – if you don’t have any conversion on advertising, what’s the point? Targeting plays an important part. If I were booking media, I would look at the audience profile and see if they were the actual decision makers or purchasers of my product or service. For instance you could have a title that has 50% of its audience working outside of Australia, so that wouldn’t be entirely promising for a product that’s only available in Australia. If you’re doing a mass consumer campaign though, numbers are great.
Overall, I think the Google tool is useful as far as tools go, all of the publications mentioned above have their place and position, and our small Australian market is currently being serviced well by the variety.
And finally, just a small insight from a removed-reader perspective – I know this is your ‘opinion’ section, but wouldn’t this info lend itself better to being in your media kit or advertiser section? It’s nice to keep business from pleasure sometimes.