DSTI/ICCP/IE(2009)14/REV1
Box 11. Newspaper Internet audience data There are a number of Internet traffic measurement firms that have established themselves over the years (OECD, 2004 ITO) ! ComScore, Nielsen Netratings and Experian Hitwise to name the most known ones. The newspaper association themselves either partner with these firms or put up their own survey. The key metrics are visitors or unique visitors to a page and page views based on logfiles. There is a difference between visits and unique users ! the former takes into account customer loyalty and return visits rather than just the number of people that have used the site at least once in a month. It is important not to compare these figures. The other major difference is methodology. Some figures are based on a survey / panel of users and then extrapolated to end up with the final figure (methodology 1), whereas other data is based on monitoring data collected directly from ISPs (visitors and page views) (methodology 2). A third way is through aggregation of data from individual newspaper organisations who monitor their own site (e.g. The Guardian reporting on its own web traffic) (methodology 3). Online Internet usage data enables us to assess where users come from (over a portal, other news site, search engine, etc.) and where they leave to. It can either be based on traffic monitored through data from ISPs (as in the case of most Internet traffic measurement firms). The drawback of Internet usage data obtained via methodologies 1 and 2 is that business Internet users (most daytime use of the Internet of professionals) and traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes are often excluded. Often the data also excludes access from mobile phones or PDAs. Moreover, when available, demographic data is usually associated with the person in the household subscribing to the ISP, i.e. when a child surfs in a household this is accredited to the head of the household who is usually the actual subscriber. Experian Hitwise For purposes of this study we rely on data provided by Experian Hitwise and in previous OECD studies (ITO, 2004). The Experian Hitwise data sample provides a good indication of the relative popularity of Web usage in each country measured. It collects data from two sources. One is anonymous usage data collected from multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in each market. The ISPs include some of the main ISPs as well as a geographically diverse range of middle-tier and small ISPs, representing both home and work usage. Sample sizes are very large, with around 10 million Internet users included in the United States and over 8.4 million in the United Kingdom, for example. The second source of data in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand is a supplementary sample of the usage of opt-in panelists. This supplementary data is used to provide demographic data. Number of visits is the key metric used to calculate the percent2*&4' 7)-910&0' 8>' B:7&)12+' O1$/14&P' K' "9141$#' 14' defined as a series of page requests by a visitor without 30 consecutive minutes of inactivity identified by a collection of page requests from an IP address or a specific unique identifier grouped to form a visit. Most IP addresses analysed by Experian Hitwise are unique to an individual and do not serve more than one visitor.
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