Case Study: Newspaper Online Analytics (N.O.A)

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Case Study: Newspaper Online Analytics (N.O.A) Posted in Digital Marketing Basics, Concocted by Violet Kadzura,
Published on 31 October 2011

When websites for newspapers like The Daily Mail and The Guardian need reliable statistics on their online traffic, they turn to resources like ABCe and NOA (Newspaper Online Analytics). ABCe has always been the industry standard for auditing the online audience of British newspapers and NOA is relatively new to the industry but it’s methodology promises accurate and thorough results.

This resource also “helps advertisers and planners maximize the effectiveness of their investment in online national newspapers advertising.” NOA participants are given information on unique visitors by day, time of day, how long consumers spend on each site, what content attracts the most traffic, whether they access the website through search engines and the search terms that readers use.

Armed with this information, brands and newspapers can see which areas need more attention and which areas need transformation. This will in turn, ensure that these websites stay relevant to consumers. To get a more accurate number of visitors, NOA sets apart people who visit the wesites more than once, which will obviously forms a more reliable and concrete reflection of the audience. The Mirror, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Observer are just a few British newspapers that use NOA to track their audiences.

The technology that NOA uses is hosted by Sophus3 which specializes in measuring and analyzing e-business management information. Sophus3 is responsible for tracking, reporting and benchmarking online traffic for most of the manufacturers across Europe and Australia and analyzing more than 200 million pages views a month. NOA participants are also tracked by Sophus3 by a tag on their online pages.

N.O.A’s strength is that is customized and specially made for online publications so it’s a technology that understands the specifics of online newspapers down to the smallest detail. Instead of a newspaper adopting other tracking innovations they have a resource that was created with them in mind.