Comments on: Are Nielsen Net Ratings bunkum?

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

People access news websites from multiple computers and devices. I access multiple newpaper sites from my Work PC, laptop, home PC. I even read online news with my iPod Touch and my Nintendo Wii.

Soon we will be reading ‘The Australian’ on our toasters.

By: Russell

Russell — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I run a busy community centre in inner melbourne and we’ve just been offered (and accepted) a subscription change. Once upon a time a single copy of The Age was $1.40. Now we get 5 copies for just 60c all-in. Go figure?

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

It seems that Margaret Simons has missed a fundamental aspect of online media consumption.

‘According to Nielsen the six top daily newspapers between them have almost 13 million unique viewers per month within Australia.’ Simply to add up the unique viewers to different sites does not give you a total of unique individuals. In my daily news perusals, I will view at least 6 different websites, from the Oz, to the Age, to leFigaro, to AlJazeera and I am hardly unusual in this. On each of those websites, I will be a unique visitor. Therefore, if you add up my visit to the Age and to the Oz, according to Margaret, I would be two people. The conclusion is not that 13 million individuals access online news each month, but that the Nielsen data presents a venn diagram of intersecting readerships which only a fundamental breaking of privacy laws could actually consolidate into accurate data about overall online news consumption.

As Margaret said, ‘All the methods for measuring the appetite for journalism have question marks over them.’ When it comes to measuring online statistics, however, the question mark should be after ‘what does it mean?’ as opposed to ‘how can we make the pollsters look unprofessional?’

Tim
St Kilda, VIC

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Is this the most mathematically inept article in history? possibly. Even the writer acknowledges it when saying ‘Either that or individual readers are accessing the websites of several newspapers many times’.

I access probably 10-15 news and weather sites each day (yes i am a bit of a freak in that regard- but i doubt i am alone)…….therefore the aggregate figure needs to surely take this factor in.

frankly a ridiculous article generally

By: Granleese

Granleese — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Two important points:

1) The combined reach you quote is 13million unique browsers, but this is not the “unduplicated” reach. This would be less, if you believe that someone might access more than one news website in a single month.

2) Unique browsers is not unique people. A unique browser is a represents an individual computer. Thus, this doesn’t take into account that a person who accesses News websites from home and at work is the same person.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Russell, I’m happy for you but what on earth does this have to do with internet hit figures?

Margaret it seems I am not Robinson Crusoe in thinking your article is ridiculous….

By: Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

The article said that one possible explanation was that ” individual readers are accessing the websites of several newspapers many times.” Even taking this into account, the Neilsen figures are far too high for common sense to accept, and within the news organisations concerned are regarded with scepticism - though they don’t tell the advertisers that!
My industry sources point out that while one reader may get counted several times - because of accessing news sites at home as well as at work - this is countered by the fact that several readers at home, using the same machine, may be counted as only one unique browser.
While Crikey readers are almost by definition current affairs junkies, it defies belief that Australians in the broad are accessing multiple news sites regularly, and certainly the best independent figures available, from ACMA, do not support this theory. Therefore the Neilsen figures are too high for credibility.