Building Networked Audiences Muhammad Ali Hashmi Winter 2012 Page 1 of 28 The News International The News International is one of the two largest English-language newspapers in Pakistan. Its parent company Independent Media Corporation circulates the highest number of newspapers in the country (Shoeb, 2011, p. 32) and is Pakistan’s largest media conglomerate. The News International’s website thenews.com.pk is ranked at 70 by alexa.com in country ranking for Pakistan (See Exhibit 1). Audience demographics: thenews.com.pk According to internetworldstats.com1, Pakistan has an Internet penetration of 15.5 percent, which is higher than India’s 10.2 percent. Pakistan’s overall literacy rate is 57 percent, according to the latest Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey2 2008-09. The literacy rate in urban areas is 74 percent, while in rural areas it is 48 percent. Urban areas in Pakistan, like most developing nations, are economic and education hubs. Most of the educated people live in urban cities where the Internet is easily available. In addition, there are 3.7 million3 Pakistanis who live abroad. Pakistani diaspora shares the same demographic profile as Pakistanis in urban areas of Pakistan. The thenews.com.pk is an English-language news site; its audience is primarily English-speaking, educated Pakistanis, who either live abroad or in the urban areas of 1 http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm 2 http://www.pbs.gov.pk/content/pakistan-social-and-living-standards-measurement-survey-pslm-2008-09- provincial-district 3 http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/pakistani-expats-given-right-to-vote-back-home-to-ensure- remittances/ Page 2 of 28 Pakistan. According to alexa.com, 68.3 percent of its visitors are from Pakistan, 9.0 percent from India, 4.7 percent from the US, 3.4 percent from UK, 1.7 percent from UAE, 1.6 percent from Canada, 1.5 percent from Australia and 1 percent from Mauritius (See Exhibit 2). When it comes to education demographics, people who went to graduate school are greatly over-represented at thenews.com.pk, while all other educational bands (people who did not go to college, people with some college education and people who went to college) are either greatly-underrepresented or under-represented. According to alexa.com, the age group 35-to-44 is under-represented at thenews.com.pk, relative to the general internet population. On the other hand, the age group 55-64 is over-represented at thenews.com.pk. When it comes to gender, relative to the general internet population, males are over- represented at thenews.com.pk. In contrast, female gender is under-represented at thenews.com.pk. Finally, its audience groups with children and without children have representation similar to the general internet population. Basic Traffic Metrics According to alexa.com, thenews.com.pk has a global rank of 6,352 and a country rank of 70 (See exhibit 1). It currently has an estimated worldwide traffic of unique 470,0004 visitors per month, according to Google Ad Planner. Out of its 470,000 visitors, it has 290,000 visitors from Pakistan; 53,000 visitors from USA; 39,000 visitors from India; 27,000 visitors from UK; and 15,000 visitors from Canada (See exhibit 3). 4 unduplicated number of people who visit a site over a specific month Page 3 of 28 According to comScore.com5 (See exhibit 4), traffic on thenews.com.pk has increased 245.2 percent to 144,000 unique visitors in Jan. 2012 from 41,714 visitors in Jan. 2011. However, according to compete.com, the site had 47,884 unique visitors per month in Jan 2011, up 48.80 percent from 32,181 in Jan. 2011 (Both comScore.com and compete.com generate statistics for the US region only). Political events drive traffic at thenews.com.pk. Regardless of the discrepancy in visitors’ calculation, both comScore.com (Figure 1, left) and compete.com (Figure 1, right) show that thenews.com.pk saw spikes in May 2011 and Nov. 2011. These spikes could be attributed to political events in Pakistan. In May 20116, Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by US Navy SEALS in Pakistan. In Nov. 2011, NATO air-strike killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers. In addition, Imran Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, pulled a huge rally in Lahore on Oct. 307, which created a news commotion in the subsequent month. Figure 1 As per latest numbers, the site thenews.com.pk has recorded 6.7 million page views worldwide, according to Google Ad Planner. It is a low number, considering Canada’s Toronto Star’s thestar.com has 51 million page views worldwide. Out of 6.7 million page 5 For United States users 6 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is-killed.html?pagewanted=all 7 http://tribune.com.pk/story/285058/pti-rally-in-lahore-live-updates/ Page 4 of 28 views, 3.1 million are from Pakistan; 1 million from USA; 240,000 from India; 620,000 from UK; and 380,000 from Canada. Data from alexa.com indicates that page views have increased since Dec 2011. Average estimated percentage of global page views on thenews.com.pk have increased by to 0.001063 in the last three months, up 14 percent from the previous period. At the start of 2011, page view percentage metric was around 0.0005 percent. The latest number is around 0.00125— an increase of about 150 percent since 2011. Figure 2 alexa.com According to alexa.com, the average of estimated daily unique page views per user was 5.12 for the last three months, up 3 percent from the previous period. The average time spent on the site by a user was around 5 minutes 59 seconds for the last three months, down 18 percent from the previous period. Competitive Landscape Apart from The News International, the four leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan are Dawn News (dawn.com), Daily Times (dailytimes.com.pk), The Express Tribune (tribune.com.pk) and The Nation (nation.com.pk). Established by Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1951, Dawn News has an “elitist readership” and Page 5 of 28 is the most-widely read English-language newspaper in Pakistan (Shoeb, 2011, pp. 31-35). Dawn News has been the main competitor of The News International in the last two decades. However, in 20108, the Pakistani media company Century Publications Pvt Limited partnered with International Herald Tribune to launch The Express Tribune, which has now become a serious competitor to The News International. The market space for thenews.com.pk is extremely competitive. According to compete.com, the news.com.pk ranks third among sites similar to it in the US region: 1) dawn.com 94,920; 2) tribune.com.pk 68,068; 3) thenews.com.pk 47,884; 4) dailytimes.com.pk 31,810; 5) nation.com.pk 31,602 (See exhibit 5). According to latest Google Ad Planner results, dawn.com has an estimated worldwide traffic of unique 900,000— almost double that of the thenews.com.pk— visitors per month. It recorded 420,000 visitors from Pakistan; 200,000 visitors from USA; 57,000 visitors from India; 62,000 visitors from UK; and 51,000 visitors from Canada. The site tribune.com.pk has an estimated worldwide traffic of unique 620,000 visitors per month— which is 150,000 more than the figure for thenews.com.pk. It recorded 430,000 visitors from Pakistan; 63,000 visitors from USA; 30,000 visitors from India; and 20,000 visitors from Canada. (See exhibit 3 and Figure 3 below) 8 http://www.ihtinfo.com/pdfs/pressreleases/IHT%20CPPL%20pub%20alliance%20press%20release%20FINAL%20Ja n2010.pdf Page 6 of 28 63,000 tribune.com.pk 430,000 620,000 53,000 USA thenews.com.pk 290,000 Pakistan 470,000 Worldwide 200,000 dawn.com 420,000 900,000 0 400,000 800,000 Figure 3 Comparison between Dawn News, The News International, The Express Tribune Interestingly, BBC Online (bbc.co.uk) has 750,000 unique visitors per month, according to Google Ad Planner. In terms of Alexa country rankings, bbc.co.uk is ranked at 26 in Pakistan, tribune.com.pk at 54, dawn.com at 66 and news.com.pk at 70. This means that the competition landscape is quite tough for news.com.pk. Figure 3 shows that thenews.com.pk lags behind dawn.com and tribune.com.pk in the major markets. Linking and Search Engine Optimization According prchecker.info, a third party tool to check Google’s page ranking, thnews.com.pk and tribune.com.pk have a page rank of 6, while dawn.com has a page rank of 89. The site thenews.com.pk receives nearly one-fifths of its referrals from search engines. The percentage of visits to thenews.com.pk that came from a search engine for last 9 Nytimes.com has a page rank of 9. Page 7 of 28 30 days is 17.6 percent, according to alexa.com. Google Ad Planner assigns a numeric score called affinity to sites and key words. The affinity score shows the relationship between a site and a keyword. According to Google affinity score, a person, in Pakistan, searching for the keyword “news” is 39.4 times more likely than the average internet user to visit thenews.com.pk. Similarly, a person searching for the keywords “jang” is 6.4 times more likely than the average internet user to visit thenews.com.pk (See Figure 4).