ABCe deal for 'thisis' sites

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Tuesday 9 September 2008

Northcliffe Media has announced the first ABCe audit figures for individual ‘thisis’ websites.

In a deal which sees Northcliffe become one of the first regional newspaper and online publishers to release data on the new ABCe six month certificate, monthly, weekly and daily figures will be released twice a year for 10 ‘thisis’ sites, as well as the network as a whole.

“Regional newspaper publishers have previously reported their website figures only on an ad hoc basis,” explained ABCe today. “This new six monthly certificate, requires continuous reporting, and enables regional media owners to report their online data alongside their print figures.”

The sites involved in this first phase are the 10 with the largest audiences, including thisisbristol.co.uk, thisisderbyshire.co.uk, thisisgloucestershire.co.uk, thisishull.co.uk, thisisleicestershire.co.uk, thisisplymouth.co.uk and thisissouthwales.co.uk. This is set to grow to 20 sites for the period January to June 2009 with the ultimate aim of covering all major urban and regional sites in the future.

“ABC and ABCe are continually developing reporting standards and with the introduction of the new six month certificate, publishers such as Northcliffe Media will be able to demonstrate to advertisers, clearly and regularly, their cross platform performance,” added Martyn Gates, director of newspapers.

“We are very excited about the growth we’ve experienced across our ‘thisis’ network during the last few months,” commented Northliffe’s director of marketing Sean Mahon. “It is important at the same time to illustrate to the advertising community that we have a thriving and growing online audience.”

The ABCe certificates are available to view at www.abce.org.uk and cover the period from 1st April to 30th June 2008. The 10 individual sites showed reach figures ranging from 120,000 to 319,000 unique users/browsers per month. The latest audited figures follow on from Northcliffe Media and Survey Interactive’s study from earlier in the year that showed that Northcliffe’s de-duplicated monthly reach across all of its newspapers and websites was approximately 4.7 million adults, based on a combination of Average Issue Readership and monthly online visitors.