Fairfax overstated app views

Amended figures show monthly views to Fairfax phone apps have increased this quarter rather than decreased as originally reported

FAIRFAX media erroneously overstated monthly page views to its phone apps and has released amended figures.

Original figures for the second quarter of 2011 reported ‘apps – monthly page views’ as 3.3 million at the Sydney Morning Herald and 1.5 million at The Age.

It appeared to indicate a subsequent fall of 51 percent and 56 percent respectively during the third quarter according to figures released last Friday.

Fairfax has now released amended second quarter figures of 1.1 million at the Herald and 912,000 at The Age – indicating the original figures detailed the total number of page views over the three-month period not the monthly page views as suggested.

The revised figures highlight a more promising increase in monthly page views to phone apps of 54 percent (The Herald) and 68 percent (The Age) during the last quarter.

A Fairfax spokesperson told News Now: “The ‘phone apps monthly page views’ methodology was updated between Q2 [quarter two] and Q3 [quarter three] so that the reported number is an average, not a total, for the period. We have adjusted the Q2 baseline to reflect this.”

Both the original and the revised second quarter reports tabled the figure as “monthly page views”.