Seven West claims The Nightly has a “loyal audience”. does it

Earlier this year, Seven West Media was launched the night, a free-to-read nightly digital newspaper aimed at a national audience.

The paper has been pitched as a means for billionaire chairman Kerry Stokes to expand his influence beyond the Western Australian media market and onto the east coast.

The media mogul enjoys complete dominance of WA, where he owns the only major newspaper, more than 20 community papers and the free-to-air news website PerthNow, as well as the Seven Network’s television and digital assets.

The digital newspaper concept, which is published (as the name suggests) at night rather than in the morning, was backed by three billionaires: Katie Page, chief executive of Harvey Norman, Chris Ellison, chairman of Mineral Resources and Gina Rinehart, Executive Chairman of Hancock Prospecting.

In February, then-editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie said the publication’s goal was to “disrupt the East Coast market with a focus on common-sense, middle-of-the-road journalism,” with a worldview that would “economically conservative (and) socially. progressive”.

Last month, Seven West came together The Nightly’s fast riser in the rankings of Australian news websites by audience size according to Ipsos data.

“Just seven months after its launch, The Nightly now it’s just below The Australian in the ranking of news websites, and several places higher than The Australian financier review“, said the statement, with The Nightly reaching an audience of 2.84 million people in August, 8.7% more than in July.

every night Publisher Sarah-Jane Tasker said the figures reflected that “readers are increasingly loyal to downloading the evening news. It sets the agenda, publishing front pages hours before other newspapers arrive around the country”. de Ceglie as editor-in-chief, Chris Dore, said he is sure even the prime minister reads The Nocturne.

But does Seven West’s beloved new website really have the “increasingly loyal” audience it says it does?

while The Nightly’s Ipsos’ performance shows that the paper is doing well for one metric, other metrics provide a more complete picture of how the public interacts with the outlet. Third-party analytics services suggest that readers who land on the site click through to other content at a much higher rate than comparable publications. The vast majority of people come from social media to read The Nocturne they have been targeted from places other than the digital newspaper’s underdeveloped social media followers.

Bounce rate is a measure of the proportion of visitors to a website who leave immediately after clicking. The lower the bounce rate, the better job a website will do at convincing people to stop by and read more articles.

According to Similarweb, while free news site news.com.au had a September bounce rate of 40.64%, The Nightly’s The bounce rate was 68.94% (other analytics services have this figure much higher – Semrush pegs The Nightly’s September bounce rate of 91.2%). This means that at least two-thirds of visitors left immediately. According to Similarweb, the ABC had a bounce rate of 46.78%, while 9News came in at 57.43%. 7News was 60.73%. The Nocturne it also lags behind its self-styled rivals: the AFR stood at 58.91%, while The Australian it was 47.28%.

The disparity between third-party analytics services is because companies calculate these metrics based on data they receive from their unique sources, such as users who have agreed to track their web browsing. This data is less accurate than proprietary data, such as The Nocturne has on its own website, but its value is in relative comparisons between outlets. We asked Seven West for its internal analytics for accuracy, but it did not provide them.

The Nocturne readers also spend less time reading the website than the newspaper’s stated rivals. Similar web statistics for September show The Nightly’s The average visit duration was one minute and 24 seconds, compared to the AFR two minutes 41 seconds and The Australian four minutes 29 seconds.

Dore pointed out Crikey that both the Financial review i The Australian they benefit from these metrics as they are “both fully locked subscription sites”.

“One of the benefits of charging customers to access your site is that they are therefore more likely to consume more content while they’re on the site,” Dore said.

The Nocturne readers also spend less time on the website than on other free news websites. News.com.au had an average visit length of four minutes and 14 seconds in September, while the ABC sat at three minutes and 39 seconds. 9News’ website averaged two minutes 21 seconds, while 7News’ average was more comparable to its stablemate’s one minute 56 seconds.

Free news websites like the every night they often get a lot of traffic from their links posted on social media platforms like Facebook or X. This can be an indicator of a loyal audience that has chosen to follow the digital news publication’s accounts.

About a quarter of The Nightly’s Online traffic comes from social media, according to Similarweb. Dore noted that this is a “relatively small portion of this source’s audience compared to other major news sites.”

A BuzzSumo analysis shows that the vast majority of The Nightly’s referrals come from Facebook accounts other than The Nightly’s own They link to seven Facebook pages owned by West, including 7News in the capitals The Nocturne constantly, helping The Nocturne drive traffic using the company’s most established media brands. PerthNow and Western Australia promotes The Nocturne as much as themselves.

To this, Dore said: “Naturally, we will deploy all our assets to help promote brand awareness and help our content reach as wide an audience as possible.”

Syndication of content from partner organizations has been an important part The Nightly’s content strategy, with a significant proportion of its content coming from outside its own relatively small team (The Nocturne has 11 employees associated with LinkedIn, compared to The one of the West 330). Content from Seven West’s media brands, including paywalled content from Western Australiais available at The Nightly’s website for free, as well as premium international publication content with paywall The New York Times i The Washington Post. This may explain why audiences click The Nocturneespecially when it comes to international news

Dore said Crikey that it was not uncommon for news websites to “rely on publishing and cable partners for content and then curate it for their audience,” and The Nocturne “it was no different.” He said this The New York Times i The Washington Post were not “relatively significant sources of traffic to The Nocturne. The Nocturne staff and contributors drive the overwhelming majority of our traffic.”

While Dore’s predecessor, De Ceglie, said at launch that the publication would have a “socially progressive” editorial direction, the opinion section of The Nocturne has not reflected it. Alongside a number of high profile contributors (including Dore himself with his signature column ‘The Front Dore’, maybe a play The Australian Financial Review “Later” column), the opinion section of The Nocturne has recently published editorials describing independent WA senator Fatima Payman as “ego-driven” and “cynical”, calling for less government spending and opining that “the West’s aim must be to secure a victory Israeli” in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. .

During the last fifteen days, the only collaborating politicians have been members of the Coalition. Other collaborators a The Nocturne have included a number of high-profile figures from Seven West, including ex sunrise host David Koch, senior reporters Mark Riley and Michael Usher, as well as London-based ex age i Sydney Morning Herald Australian political journalist Latika Bourke.

As Seven West Media’s share price continues to fall (as of the close on October 13, it stands at $0.17, down 26% from its February launch of The Nocturne when it sat at $0.23) could influence it as well. Despite what the press releases say.