NYT sees bigger pageview numbers post-inauguration; credit slideshows

By Zachary M. Seward /  Jan. 23, 2009  /  4:54 p.m.  

Tuesday was a big day for pageviews on The New York Times website, of course. But get this: Wednesday was even bigger.

Jonathan Landman, deputy managing editor for digital journalism at the Times, offered that intriguing tidbit in a memo to staff this morning. He wrote:

Based on past experience, we expected less traffic the day after Inauguration Day than on Inauguration Day itself. We expected wrong. On the day after, we had nearly 49 million pageviews, 25 percent more than on Inauguration Day and the third highest day ever in terms of pageviews.

Visits, however, were down slightly from the day before, at 8.3 million.

That’s interesting. Fewer people visited nytimes.com but they looked at more pages. In fact, they set a record, clicking on 5.8 pageviews per visit, up from 4.7 on Inauguration Day and 40% higher than our usual average of around 4.4. (The second highest day in for pageviews per visit came last week, when the US Airways flight landed in the Hudson.)

Call it the Day-After Effect. Plenty has been written about the huge demand for live streaming video of the festivities on Tuesday, but there was obviously a strong demand for inauguration content long after the event itself. How did the Times take advantage of it? By letting readers relive the moment with copious photographs.

Landman reports that 11 million of the nearly 49 million pageviews on Wednesday went to slideshows. One slideshow of the inaugural balls generated 2.7 million pagesviews alone that day. A slideshow of the ceremony garnered 900,000, and another one took in 800,000. Other multimedia took in an additional 5 million pageviews. Staggering numbers that made January 21 — not the 20th — the biggest day for pageviews per visit in nytimes.com history.

This entry was written by Zachary M. Seward, posted on January 23, 2009 at 4:54 pm, and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.


6 comments:

  1. MichaelJ at 5:12 pm, January 25, 2009

    Is there any info of how many click throughs on ads of those 49 million viewers? I ask because I continue to believe that CPM’s on web ads is a losing strategy for newspaper websites.

    I was surprised that the NYT is waiting for “President’s Day” to release the book they are publishing on the Obama campaign. I’m thinking that if they had offered it on Wednesday they would probably already have a best seller on their hands.

    It’s a perfect example of how a focus on web traffic blinds newspapers to the opportunities to sell stuff for real money from their sites.

     
  2. Zach Seward at 7:24 pm, January 25, 2009

    No, the memo didn’t disclose anything about the clickthrough rate, but it was probably low. However, I think that as long as they’re getting paid by CPM, it makes sense to juice pageviews. But you’re right that it’s not optimal. A better model might be sponsorship of features like slideshows, especially when they relate to events that are sure to get a lot of attention.

     
  3. MichaelJ at 8:38 pm, January 25, 2009

    It’s really hard to sell access to anything on the web. I think the real way to monetize the traffic is to sell stuff to readers. The New Yorker has it pretty right. The Guardian seems to have it pretty right. The others, not so much.

    If you’re interested in the longer version, I did a post this morning about this issue:
    http://sellingprint.blogspot.com/2009/01/newspaper-folks-readers-are-niche.html

     

Trackbacks:

  1. Andrew Golis » Blog Archive » links for 2009-01-25 at 4:02 pm, January 25, 2009

    [...] NYT sees bigger pageview numbers post-inauguration; credit slideshows » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pu… Note to self: more slide shows. (tags: metrics nyt journalism nieman.journalism.lab photography) [...]

     
  2. Using all of the tools at our disposal to draw interest and traffic at JMC 352 at 5:09 pm, February 25, 2009

    [...] what was interesting at The New York Times was the day after. The Nieman Lab shares some details: (Jonathan) Landman (deputy managing editor for digital journalism) reports [...]

     
  3. What the AP must do now « reDesign at 1:14 pm, June 7, 2009

    [...] photos would be a pageview goldmine; slideshows are incredibly popular. At the New York Times, 11 million of the 49 million pageviews on the day after the inauguration went to slideshows. (Bonus tip: talk to the folks at [...]

     

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