Measuring Online Papers

Why was there surprise when the New York Times announced it was going to begin charging for its online edition? Readership of the paper version is down 3.2%. Ad revenues for the paper version are down. The cost of newsprint and transportation is up. Their online version gets more than 18-million unique visitors — every day!

The New York Times is not unique, all newspapers are having trouble. The National Post only publishes online on Mondays. The top ten newspapers in North America all experienced online growth last year, and a decline in their pulp versions. Soon, all papers will be charging for access. It’s inevitable. They simply have no other choice. But overall readership of online versions will decline as a result. Many people browse several online news sources each day. When the publishers begin charging, the public will be more selective and quality publications will remain vital.

But what does this change in online readership mean from a measurement standpoint, particularly for clients and agencies? From a PR perspective, there was a simple formula for assessing the impact of a printed article on a client’s business or products. We simply took the circulation numbers for the papers as the number of impressions, and some multiplied it by 2.5 under the misguided belief that each printed copy of a newspaper was read by 2.5 people. This number has more to do with the wishful thinking of PR people than anything based on empirical measurement. Our Media Director actually laughed when I asked her if there was any validity in the 2.5 multiple.

So, now that online impressions can be measured and if a publication cooperates, views of a specific article can be accurately assessed, what does this do to the valuation of media coverage for a company or its products? The value of a news item has also been based on its position in the publication. We can console clients that a negative piece is buried at the bottom of page 26, or gloat when a new product launch is featured “above the fold” on B1. Unlike hard copy versions, online papers change their front pages frequently during the day and they often do not mirror the line-up of the print edition. Some people connect directly to a specific article and never see the homepage.

Media monitoring and valuation by PR professionals has turned a corner, and we need to be offering our clients a much more insightful and accurate way to judge the effect of earned media.

Monitoring the media is certainly easier in an Internet world, but the job of correctly assessing the real value to our clients requires more work and better in-depth analysis. We have to balance online impressions versus print and we have to delineate for clients the value of each individually, not merely lump the numbers together.

We’re finding new ways to evaluate coverage for our clients and the result is a much more accurate analysis.

- Paul Chater, Partner, paulc@marshall-fenn.com