Mumbrella redesign delivers first million page month while AWW sees 26% digital decline
Mumbrella has become the first media and marketing website to deliver more than 1m page impressions in a month, new data from the Audited Media Association of Australia reveals.
The big jump in page views for Mumbrella coincided with the launch of Mumbrella’s new website on May 10, including an improved mobile site which has seen far greater usage by readers.
According to the AMAA, during May Mumbrella delivered 1,414,772 page impressions.
Well done guys!
My first port of call daily
Keep up the great work!
…it is a good idea to check there is no double counting going on. I mean well done guys but at the same time are you sure something hasn’t crept into your analytics that may misrepresent the stats? A flat number of daily browsers but 50% increase in impressions at least warrants asking ‘why?’.
It appears the numbers of comments has dropped a lot though, mainly dare I say as the index of comments on the front page has gone?
Honestly the new site is crap.
Sure, it has more of a professional feel to it, but I can no longer read the first few sentences of articles, and now have to click in to see any real information. Does this drive up your page views?
Another bug bear, is the annoying problem of once I have clicked a link to a story, navigating back is impossible (via the back button anyway) due the now being nine instances of this story in my browser history.
Are you running some god-awful scripts that is causing this? Sure, I am using IE, so its not a fantastic experience on most sites these days.
Your UBs didn’t increase but your PVs nearly doubled in one month?
It’s probably not just your great new mobile presence causing that sort of a non-correlated jump. Like someone above is suggesting your new site is either tricking up the analytics or your old site was tricking them down. Either way, same old same old on website audited reporting….it’s often just rubbish and can’t be trusted unfortunately. How come the AMAA doesn’t question weird stuff like this?
Does the big jump have anything to do with when you are in an article page and press the back button in the browser to return to the home page the same page loads again. Happens to me every time using Chrome.
Hi Jeremy (B&T aligned),
We have done a fair bit of work with the AMAA to ensure that our audit tags have been implemented properly.
My suspicion is that there are two causes of the jump in page impressions.
First, our previous mobile experience was, to be quite honest, terrible. I’m not at all surprised that users of the mobile site are now reading more pages on each visit. I know that I am…
And second, I’m sure the fact that – on both desktop and mobile – one can scroll directly from one article to the next without going back and forth to the home page makes it easier for someone to absorb a larger number of pages. I know I do…
And hi Ben, Thanks for flagging that (and for being brave enough to go public about being on Internet Explorer; actually you’re not alone, about 7% of our traffic is from IE). It’s not a bug I’m aware of on other browsers, but I will explore.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Tim,
“I don’t think anyone is going to believe anyone’s data for the next five years. Misrepresentation, over expansion of fact and contradictory systems means most smart marketers won’t be able to work out how many eyeballs they’re going to get.” – Prof Mark Ritson, Mumbrella 360, June 2016.
It’s far worse than that and Im pretty sure you understand this better than nearly all of us in the circles in which you move. The line that we’ve doubled our web traffic in one fell swoop through some UI genius and website re-launch is possibly getting beyond it’s use by date.
It might be true. But there are a million things that can cause a doubling of traffic in a website redesign. One of them is genius UI that causes people to actually double page views by reading more. And don’t we all love to believe that happened to us. Another is what the guys above said: ‘when you hit the back button on chrome, you have to hit it twice’ (which does happen btw) or that in IE, things go awry. It’s possibly a mix of all of the above and more.
I hope it is you doubling the actual reading page traffic (not really). It’s just that even if you prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt using the AMAA Im still not going to believe it. And it’s not because I work in the same building as B&T. It’s because it’s all a mess.
Noble as their cause is (was) the AMAA is a relic of our old media psyches….the glory days when measurement meant getting a mailing figure right from Aussie Post . You might remember that even back then, the AMAA got it wrong a lot and it was constantly defrauded by small and big media organisations.
The concept the AMAA operates on doesn’t translate to the web and the AMAA isn’t resourced or, more importantly tasked, to do the job in a meaningful way. It’s a complex problem. Too complex for them unfortunately.
The line Ritson pushes is a very important one for media and marketing. Web marketing data measurement, reporting and auditing as it exists is wholly untrustworthy. And until we start admitting to stubbornly continuing to try to shove a print psyche square peg into an intricate and complex web measurement round hole, we aren’t going to move forward substantively on this important issue.
And please don’t ask why then does B&T audit with the AMAA. I don’t know.
Hi Jeremy (B&T aligned)
Ritson has a point. That’s why people shouldn’t mark their own homework – that’s the role of the audit bodies such as the AMAA.
If the AMAA has a single point as an audit organisation, it’s to help make sure that publishers don’t (accidentally or deliberately) make incorrect claims about their traffic based on things like their Google Analytics.
So our developers worked with them during May to ensure the tags were implemented properly as per the instructions of their metrics partner (Effective Measure, I believe).
Prior to the relaunch, our audited number would come in at about 80% of our Google Analytics number (No great surprise given overseas traffic, bots etc.). After the relaunch, it’s about the same.
I completely disagree with you that there’s no longer a point to having audit bodies. The harder it gets and the more ad fraud there is out there, the more important their role becomes – not less.
Do I believe B&T’s number now it’s finally part of the audit? Yes.
Do I believe AdNews’ self-reported number in their media kit based on the now discredited monthly (not daily) UBs? No, of course not.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Tim,
I think you just verballed me.
I didn’t say “there’s no longer a point to having audit bodies”. Quite the opposite. We need reliable and trustworthy measurement online more than ever and quick smart.
It’s not OK for media and media buying to be questioned in the manner that they are globally over online numbers being fraudulent on a vast scale. The numbers allegedly being misrepresented around organisations like Youtube and Google are horrific and don’t reflect well on anyone. Who is going to trust the AMAA when this stuff is going on?
Clients deserve better measurement and auditing and media organisations should be at the forefront of developing it not retarding it. Or are we going to repeat the past where the AMAA oversaw massive fraud in print audits by some of our biggest media companies.
If you prop up antiquated, irrelevant and ineffective measurement such as that which the AMAA practices, in a matter which is so important for clients , clients and other media groups will question why.
The AMAA aren’t bad people. But they aren’t up to the job of effective measurement and auditing of online engagement- Effective Measure does what the AMAA specifies and can afford.
The history of the AMAA in print suggests that even if they were technically capable (and they’re not) you’d end likely up with that same problems. So there are many issues in funding and structure to be addressed in auditing not just technical issues. As I said, it’s complex.
The AMAA is funded by the media mainly. And they aren’t funded for much. No where near enough to do online effectively.
Media should not keep putting it’s head in the sand on this issue. For a group like yourselves who do on occasion call out serious and important issues in this market well, it’s an unusual stance to take.
The sort of stuff you are pushing with your sudden doubling of traffic is like a time warp. UVs and PVs as an engagement measure online is redundant anyway.
Your group is better than that.
‘
Hi Jeremy,
No verballing intended. In that case I think what you’re arguing is that there should be audit bodies, just not the AMAA who you don’t believe are up to the job. (Those interested in ancient history should be aware that you were the wrong end of a legal spat with the organisation in its previous guise/ your previous gig.)
While I’m not sure I agree with you that they’re not up to it, they are – whether you like it or not – the umpire. They’re the joint industry body funded and supported by all sides of the equation.
For those of us that believe in transparency and auditing, the AMAA is the only game in town. Should they be better funded to do their job better? Yes, of course.
That would require more members. And that in turn would require more advertisers and media agencies demanding of their media partners that their numbers are audited.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella