SoE08: Monthly unique user stats are meaningless to advertisers, says Mail Online director

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Publishers need to start sharing user data with advertisers and produce daily breakdowns of unique users, the editorial director of Mail Online has said.

Martin Clarke, who was speaking as part of a panel at the Society of Editors (SoE) conference , said the web traffic metrics currently presented to advertisers by publishers were confusing and 'meaningless, vain, glorious figures'.

All newspaper website publishers should report daily UK and international unique user figures, in addition to the customary monthly audit figures provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe), he said.

"The monthly unique visitor figure we quote is meaningless, an utter waste of time. The only figures that should matter are daily visitors and how long they stay on the site," said Clarke.

Publishers need to 'find a way of making the equation not so dependent on your massive UV number' and instead focus on providing advertisers with engagement stats for users, he added.

Fellow panellist Carolyn McCall, CEO of Guardian Media Group, said newspaper groups had previously been reluctant to share web traffic figures with advertisers, but called for the industry to become more open.

"We have to become more like AutoTrader with more measurable, targeted advertisings," said McCall.

"There's a whole range of stats from [the] web that we are going to have to share with advertisers. We protect our data because we think advertisers are going to beat us up," she said.

Figures given to advertisers should clearly demonstrate newspapers' position as 'premium destinations' for online advertising, added Clarke.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Clarke said there was a disparity between content produced by newspaper websites and the rate for advertising on those sites.

"Monday to Friday my visitors are spending an average of nine minutes on the site, that's two minutes per page. This means that people are reading more articles and getting more engaged, yet we only sell per page impression," he said.

"Advertisers can buy space on my website and other websites very, very cheaply and the differential between what they might pay for say a fanzine website and Mail Online is not that great.

"We as an industry need to find a way of charging in a way that's more appropriate for the quality of our content. The only way we can do that is by selling ourselves a lot better."

Standard traffic measurement across all competing media sites, including magazines and broadcasters, is needed to give advertisers 'an informed choice about where they buy', added Clarke.

While Mail Online does not invest in paid-for search results, he said, there is an argument for making clear to advertisers how much traffic is generated by this method.

"When newspapers publish their [print] figures we break out bulks and discount copies, whereas online we make out that all that traffic is equal," he said.

"Shouldn't you tell advertisers, because you'd have thought an advertiser would value organic traffic higher than paid-for traffic."

To hear Journalism.co.uk's full interview with Martin Clarke visit our blog.