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Trinity Mirror is piloting a new tool that it claims can measure the online-only readership of its newspaper websites, disregarding readers that cross-over and read its printed products.

The publisher claims the new technique, created by Survey.com, is the 'most accurate form of multimedia internet audience measurement available'.

It's on trial across Trinity's regional newspaper titles to produce figures on the 'unduplicated reach' of the publisher's regional websites - number of unique users to a site who do not also read a print edition.

According to the publishing group, the new system avoids the limitations of other metrics that rely on representative audience samples. It added that internal data generated by the tool showed that only ten per cent of unique users visiting its websites didn't read the print equivalent.

Despite the bold claims made on behalf of the new technology, the developers were reticent to reveal how the system works.

Guy Lipscombe, managing director of Survey.com, would only tell Journalism.co.uk that the system is based on 'measuring the people not computers' who view a site, preventing duplicate records as a person accesses a site across a range of devices.

The system, he added, would calculate the overlap between print and online audience of titles by profiling readers' media consumption habits.

He would not confirm if the system used polls, which - if any - elements were automated or online, or if it was entirely based on profiling.

Nor was any evidence supplied to how information would be gathered to disregard those users that read both the print and online versions.

The measurement procedure has, however, been endorsed by the Newspaper Society and the Joint Industry Committee for Regional Press Research (JICREG).

The UK national newspaper industry currently tends to favour the metrics supplied by the Audit of Bureau of Circulations(ABC).

The ABC publishes a monthly report for five national newspaper of their joint web and newspaper circulation/user figures. The report doesn't, however, quantify the total 'reach' of a newspaper in the way this new system claims to.

Trinity expects to apply this new process to its UK and Scottish national titles with preliminary results expected in the summer.

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abce | trinity mirror | regional | metrics |

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