One of Australia's largest media companies last month began rolling out “personalised dashboards” to give journalists the power to track their stories online as part of broader plans to adapt in real-time and offer a better environment for advertisers.
In September, Crikey reported that Fairfax Media will give journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age weekly updates on how many people clicked on their stories, how long they lingered and the number of social shares.
But while this is a new phase in digital analytics for the company, The Guardian Australia's MD, Ian McClelland, said Fairfax reporters have been long denied access to this vital web traffic information, a delay that has damaging consequences for "understanding journalism" and gauging what readers want.
“It's amazing they've only just got to that point. It seemed like a story from the early 2000s,” McClelland said, referring to Crikey's coverage of the new click reports on 7 September.
“Our journalists have had access to that type of information for the best part of the last decade. Since 2012, they've had instant access to real-time analytics for every story,” he said. “This gives reporters an understanding of how long a reader stayed on a story and how far through the article they got.”
McClelland said access to real-time data has major benefits for advertisers, with the news website targeting ads to articles that are “surging” or reaching peak audiences.
“If we know a particular advertiser is interested in stories around certain topics then we can target their ads to those articles,” he explained.
McClelland said companies such as Diageo, GE and Phillips are working with The Guardian to use “surging” and web traffic data to focus their advertising and create content in real-time.
“Finance, automotive, consumer and enterprise electronics brands seem to be creating really effective communication," he said. "We are still improving the capabilities and looking for more Australian advertisers to do similar things.”
Despite the increase in the way advertising is linked to web traffic, The Guardian maintain the commercial side of the business has no influence over editorial content.
Similarly, Fairfax’s group director of news and business media, Sean Aylmer, told Crikey that using dashboard data will help “influence — but not dictate — the way in which we do our journalism”.
But Fairfax's commercial director, Tom Armstrong, said although editorial will always be independent, there is “no reason why we would not consider advertisers being able to be associated with stories or journalists”.
“Advertisers are interested in our audiences and we are constantly looking for new ways to be more targeted, relevant and innovative ... This data provides additional insights which may create new opportunities for advertisers,” Armstrong said. "How advertising is delivered, and its format, is where we will see the most change."
He said while Fairfax already have packages around the federal budget, elections, keywords and topics, the dashboard data will allow more opportunity to target and react faster.
In June, The Atlantic reported that The New York Times and Washington Post would soon make web traffic data available to reporters, two of the last major American national publications to do so.
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