UKC

1. UKClimbing.com, 75,600 circulation (Nov-2003)
2. Summit magazine, 40,663 circulation (ABC)
3. Trail magazine, 35,310 circulation
4. Climber magazine, 12,600 circulation
5. High magazine, 11,000 circulation
6. On The Edge magazine, 10,000 circulation

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

Come on Mickfax, its obvious enough you're comparing apples with shellfish, isn't it ?

In reply to Red Sonja:

I agree Sonja......an integrated marketing campaign that doesn't ram the stuff down your throat in a media that is engaging and interactive is far more effective than a passive print media campaign.

However, combine the two...print and web.....and you're winning.

M

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

Is Nov-2003 some new media analysis organisation?

I take it that the trailing (no pun intended) publications also have their circulation determined by ABC? Oh and how can a website have a circulation?

Other than the positions of Climber and High I am not surprised by the ordering of your list (if it's genuine that is). In general the more specialised your editorial content, the lower the sales. So 9000 sales in Sheffield of OTE, 900 for the rest of the UK and a 100 or so for our friends in the colonies.

Bob

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: On the edge totally deserves to sell the least. Over the last 3 years it's been shite.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:
...in a media that is engaging and interactive...

A medium. Media is the plural, annoys the hell out of me every time.

Apples = number of copies bought. Multiply by x (3?) to get number of readers

Shellfish = number of "visits" ? Divide by x (20???) to get number of readers

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: stop talking shit. they are all aweful!

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: much like my spelling. awful

In reply to Red Sonja:

amo
amas
amat

mensa
........

In reply to Bob:

Good point Bob indeed.

It doesn't have a circulation, it isn't limited by print runs or buying decisions, it is open to all. That is it's strength.

Readership or even "following" would perhaps be a better word. However you define it, a website that fullfills the needs of the climbing community will always have more readers/viewers than a print magazine.

What are the media needs of the climbing community?

The challenge is....two fold and related.

How to make it content rich as regards news and features, how to make it incredibly good value to the advertizers.

You need readers to get advertizers, you need rich content to get readers, you need advertizers to make it content rich.

The conundrum.

Hence the RISK......pour some money in to content and readers and then the advertizers will follow. That hasn't happened yet, but when it does...

M

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

"Readership or even "following" would perhaps be a better word. However you define it, a website that fullfills the needs of the climbing community will always have more readers/viewers than a print magazine. "

Do the figures for the magazines count just the sales or an estimate of the number of readers. The reader survey of one magazine (not climbing related) I buy asks how many people read the individual copy. Presumably some analysis is done on this figure to present to advertisers, blah, blah.

Now, it should be reasonably clear that advertising "subsidises" editorial copy to some degree. The editors/owners have to make a profit somewhere along the line and greater content means greater costs ( payment of royalties; extra paper; greater printing costs) which either have to be borne by the reader through a greater cover price or further subsidised by advertising. The editorial team may decide increase the content and take a loss for a couple of months as a loss-leader in the hope that more advertising will come along and correct the sums. But as you say it's a risk, and the pot of advertising money in the climbing world is fairly small.

Advertising will only permit magazines to become content rich if the advertisers avoid editorial censorship.

Bob

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

very interesting 'micky love' (league of gentlemen, don't think you get that on NBC), but you seem to missing the point, which is;

when was the last time you had a good shit whilst surfing the web?

a dump, a good magazine and a cup of tea are an institution in the UK, if you can cast your mind back that far.

m@

In reply to m@ at home:

when was the last time you had a good shit whilst surfing the web?

you need a wireless router and laptop my friend.

heeeeeeeeave.

In reply to virgil:

that did cross my mind, but having tried to use a laptop on the crapper, i found it most uncomfortable and unhygienic.



m@

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

Out of interest how did you audit the ukclimbing.com figures - as the man said... lies, damn lies and log files

In reply to daf@work:

How exactly do UKClimbing measure "circulation"? "We use the number of unique IP addresses (very technical!)" doesn't really explain very much ...

Incidentally if you use Mozilla Firebird (www.texturizer.net/firebird/news.html) with an ad-blocking extension (www.texturizer.net/firebird/adblock.html), you will never see any advertising banners - I guess it's lucky that 95% of the surfing population don't know this and use Internet Explorer instead.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: Is online marketing really any good? I couldn't tell you one single company that has advertised on ukclimbing via banners etc. I have trained myself to completely ignore them and skip to the info that I am interested in

In reply to Jon Dittman:

With my R+R hat on – it’s the only kind of advertising we do. Obviously we use UKC but we also use Google and Rockfax. We don’t use letter heads, business cards or paper catalogues, we don’t even advertise in the Yellow Pages these days.

Generally speaking I would not advise that any business completely dumps their paper advertising but they should at least be testing and experimenting with online ads.

In reply to Jon Dittman:

Hi John

How did you notice us then when you made the enquiry, we have been a banner ad and the PP, and we have had loads and loads of enqueries from both.

Sam The Orange House

In reply to yet another jon:

The Google toolbar also has an ad-blocker. I just get a nice [ad] block where the sales pitch should be.

Bob

In reply to Sam - The Orange House: To be frank, I saw either you, or one of the other Orange people and clicked on the profile and then onto the personal web page. This was ages ago and so when we thought about a trip out your way, I thought of you. I think your way of advertising is a bit more subtle than a banner. I doubt I would have know about you if you posted as just Sam and had a load of banners on here.

Alas we won't be able to make it this Feb. The flights for that time have gone up past the point of affordability, but thanks for the info - I will keep it in mind. Sorry.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:
perhaps there should be more magazine like articles on here, perhaps monthly bouldering, trad and mountaineering round-ups, perhaps 'in association with' or sponsored by.. but then that might start to take readers away from the mags.

In reply to Jon Dittman:

Never mind about Feb, I am sure we will see you soon.

I hope others agree that we are not 'in your face' just trying to get the word out as quickly and as painlessly as we can.

Must say though, looks like we are going to have a really really busy Spring,

also check out climber this month, picture of Me and Rich climbing out here...

Sam

In reply to Matt:

But as the last mag you buy - this edition of Climber - its got me in it....

Sam Orange House

In reply to Andy Hyslop - UKC:

Interested that you find that. We've found that almost all of our online business is driven by offline marketing nad campaigns. Our online advertising has generally provided much lower returns, particularly banner advertising, though keyword sponsorship has proved a little better.

Depends on the product of course!

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:
I assume you work out the ukclimbing circulation by measuring something like hits from unique IP addresses. This will include anyone who came in for a brief look and went away again.

To do the equivalent for print mags you'd have to include everyone who flicked through it in WH Smith but left without paying. In which case ukclimbing would probably be down at the bottom of the list

In reply to Simon Caldwell:

Yes we do, and maybe ‘Circulation’ is not the term that we should use to compare traffic with the mags.


There are endless immeasurable comparisons that can be made between print and online users. I think the main point is (made earlier by Red Sonja) that they are two different mediums and perhaps its not totally fair for us to compare our visitors to Mag circulation. Of course the other side is that WH Smith bin huge quantities of mags every month that don’t sell, but do get recorded as circulation by the publishers.


Obviously I am biased, but all factors taken into consideration, I think UKC does have an awesome amount of traffic which is in my experience is worth more to advertisers than anyone one of the current mags.

In reply to kinsei:

I think it does depend on product, market and where you are in the market. REI were a good example a few years ago when they dumped their print catalogue. They drastically underestimated their customer’s reliance on it and had reinstate it the next season. However, for new companies that have never had a print catalogue the temptation must be to not start down that route.

Again with my R+R hat on - We have spent large quantities on print ads in previous years with no measurable response. OK, I guess we have been indulging in a 20 year brand recognition campaign but I think the most useful thing we have all done in this area is to actually go climbing!

What won me over with online ads is that you can measure response on a daily basis, you can respond immediately if you have a message to get across and you can change you message mid campaign if you feel its not working for you.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't IP addresses dynamic? I reckon lots of people on here look at it whilst they are at work, perhaps visiting the site up to 10 times a day. That's only one person, but over a month your system of assessing 'circulation' will count up to 40 'people'.
Also, I may buy a single monthly magazine, but my wife and friends will usually read it as well. If that is a typical scenario you can, taking a speculative average, triple the number of people who read the magazine.

Then all of a sudden your figures don't look very impressive at all...do they?

Ciao darling.

In reply to simon panton:

Some IP addresses are dynamic, which means that in these cases the software which records visits to the site may indeed show multiple addresses for one user. However there is another counter-factor at play, where multiple users who go through a proxy, such as AOL and BT Broadband, only show up as one visitor. As far as we can ascertain from the experts, these two effects cancel each other out - which leaves the number of individual IP addresses as a fair reflection of the number of individual climbers visiting the site.

Well.... yes they do. However the most impressive statistic is the monthly growth in users - which shows no sign of abating.

Cheers

Jonathan. UKC

In reply to simon panton:


The pass-along-rate can be even higher....200+, if you put your magazine in a doctors office or maybe a climbing wall.

Mick

... and of course some hits are from search engines.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

It is true that magazines may have an extremely long life – how many collections of Mountain Magazine are there out there, ( a very good mag some of us used to read a very long time ago).

The obvious problem is that the ads are no longer relevant.

My point earlier in this thread was that many of the ads that appear in newly issued mags are not even that relevant. Typically, ad bookings can have two month lead times. By the time the ad actually appears in print something has changed and you wish you had used the space for something more topical.

If it’s a long term brand building exercise its not that big a deal, but if you have just bought in 450 sleeping bags at half price and need to tell the world, how are you going to do it? You could have sold the bloody lot in the time you would wait for the ‘deal ad’ to appear in the mags. (based on fact).

So, I think that the effectiveness of ads in back issues of mags wanes rapidly, particularly if they are product based.

In reply to Jonathan Lagoe: I'm no techy IT person (which it sounds like you might be), but I do have a friend who is, and I'll be working with him tommorrow afternoon. I'll show him this thread, and see what he says.

When you say 'some IP addresses are dynamic' what do you mean? Are you suggesting that the majority are fixed?

And who are these mysterious 'experts' that you consult with? Do they have a website where we, the general public, might read their views on this subject?

Another thing: I've clicked on thousands of websites, whilst searching for something, but left immediately. If I buy a magazine for £3, I'll read it cover to cover, and probably leave it in the toilet where I'll no doubt read it again a few weeks later. If anybody is advertising in that magazine, I'm sure I soak it up.

I don't doubt the growing popularity of this site (and others), but please, lets have some realistic perspective.

Cheers, Simon.

In reply to Simon Panton:


Here is one.

The internet is very important for you Simon as regards your North Wales bouldering guide, as is your print column in Climber, and indeed any medium that markets NW bouldering whether orchestrated by you or others.

I'll give you an example.

Your guide is going to cost a fortune to print, and not forgetting the cost of putting it all together. It would be great if you could recover those costs as quickly as possible and start turning a profit.

This is where the internet part of your " North Wales Bouldering Integrated Marketing Campaign" could really pay divedends.

Say you had 5,000 email addresses of people who are specifically interested in "bouldering" and "bouldering in North Wales". You could offer each one of those people a publication day special of say 10% off. (that would be 10% off retail, not wholesale)

What do you think the response would be?

Especially if you had already "given away" some North Wales Bouldering MiniGUIDES whilst you were preparing the print guide. (In fact...that's how you got the emails: peeps had to register to get the FREE MiniGUIDES).

Don't think that this would work?

Think again....as it does.

The crux with using the internet is to tailor it to your specific market niche..and the needs of that niche..and of course using your imagination. Combined with print advertizing, internet advertizing can be incredibly specific and effective.

Take a look at rockclimbing.com, climbing.com, and rockandice.com who are climbing media businesses who have come to this realisation.

Mick

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

If I'm flicking thru a climbing mag, and see a picture of a new bit of gear - a micro-cam say, all shiny and glossy, I might stop and look. If it pops up on a web-site, I close it down as soon as possible. MOst people who surf focus on the middle of the screen.

The market is there, but it's accessing them in a way that doesn't annoy them that's the key. No one seems to have found a way of breaking the auto-filter most surfers have without annoying them. There's a football website, teamtalk.com, where an ad for the Land Rover Discovery pops up over the headlines when yo open it. I can't close it down fast enoughh, and it certainly doesn't make me want one. Until the admen find a way of speaking to the surfers in a way that doesn't annoy them, they'll stick to what they know.

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

Mad Rock are a great example of a climbing company that are using the internet effectively.......combined with print.

They are a new company, but there brand recognition is incredibly high. It would have been significantly less if they had just used the print media, and significantly would have been far more expensive to get the awareness that they have achieved just using print.

Do a google for "Mad Rock" and you will see what I mean.

Mick

In reply to mav:

But would you if you needed some cams?

(pop-ups are bad anyway)

That's the crux....the need.

A print advert would work really well depending on the image. But lets say you really wanted to buy some cams and you wanted to make an informed buying decision. A print advert is limited by the space of the advert---and cluttered adverts aren't read.

If you had a banner advert on a popular website, entitled "which cam should I buy" and it led you to a manufacturers site that had all the statistics about the cam, user reviews and lovely imagery of the cam in use...maybe featuring famous climbers.....you would be a lot more informed than just glancing at a print advert.

But like I said before...it's the mix.....a print advert can generate interest and brand awareness which is important, but back it up with a more comprehensive internet campaign with actual sites that you can actually purchase the darn thing from and your sales would be more significant than using print alone.

Mick

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: Mick, I don't know what I would do without your enlightening sermons.

Of course I realise the power of the internet (you patronising goon), and I don't doubt that it has an important role to play in the success of any modern business or organisation.

But, I'm still going to challenge you on the original premise of this thread.

The statistics you quoted are misleading and to a large extent meaningless without an understanding of their origin/true significance and a further consideration of the complicated interplay between the advertiser, the medium(s)they use and the end consumer.

Some of the points that Andy has made about the limitations of the printed form are true, and you are absolutely right about the wonders of the internet as a promotional tool. But waving that bullshit 'circulation' figure around as if it actually has any relevance to the admittedly valid aspects of your 'the internet will save us all' schtick strikes me as an own goal. Good shot Mick - the luddites will be laughing through their beards when they hear about this.

Thanks for the advice, by the way, Simon.

In reply to Simon Panton:


There wasn't one.


That kind of hits the nail on the head doesn't it, " when they hear about this."....viral marketing in action.

Mick

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA: Look, its obvious that we agree about the power and importance of the internet. Can we argue about the 'circulation' thing instead.

Simon.

In reply to Simon Panton:

You'll probably find that most home users have dynamic ip addresses, but as has been pointed out, a lot of these go through a proxy server, which will often use NAT (Network Address Translation) - so the site that is visited will often only get 1 address - that of the proxy...

But a lot of business adresses (and academic addresses) should also be using a proxy server and NAT as well, and, as all their users should be inside a firewall, should be using an internal ip address (eg 192.168.1.2 or 10.0.0.1), and the firewall, router, proxy and NAT (which could possibly be all one computer, or other piece of hardware) would again be the only identifiable address at that location, even if there were 50 people logging into this site from that place of work...

Now more home users are moving to broadband, and some will want to run their own web-server or personal site from home, then there are likely to be more home sites with a fairly static ip address. And again, if there are several computers, then they are likely to be going through a router which has NAT again, so only one apparent address. BTW if you are using broadband at home, then you should be using a firewall, NAT, and internal ip addresses on your computers - it makes them much more difficult for crackers (normally called hackers by the media) to get into from outside....

...and if you don't think crackers are interested on what's on your computer, well, you're probably right, but they may want to use it as a third-party relay to hide their attacks on someone else, leaving you to take the blame...

In reply to Simon Panton:

Our advice on measuring these figures came from Nick Smith who is super techy. I am not saying that it isn’t up for debate but Nick would be the man who could fully justify UKC’s position and not Jonathan or I. Nick is on holiday right now.

We have grilled Nick repeatedly about the relevance of these figures because we also found them difficult to believe.

If the figures are correct you might wonder where all those visitor come from? Well, here’s a test we can’t fiddle:

Try typing ‘climbing’ into google.com

Done it for you http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=climbing...

Number 2 in isn’t bad.

In reply to Simon Panton:

OK....

Magazine circulation figures are very fluffy or nebulous. And the effectiveness of the print ads even more so. You have to consider such things as the interests and needs of the readers. Sometimes you are just waiving in the dark.......(some people like doing that)

Say Simon Panton started manufacturing bouldering pads. Where would he spend his advertizing money?

Lets say you had a 1,000 pound budget.

When you pay a thousand quid for your full page bouldering pad advert in a magazine with a circulation of 10,000. How many people are you actually reaching that need a bouldering pad. You don't know.

Now if you there was a decent dedicated ukbouldering website and a load of regional ones all with good content...with banner ads costing 100 quid a month. And considering that 60% of all adults in the UK have accessed the internet recently....prolly more in the techno-savvy world of climbing...you'd be more confident about reaching your target audience/market

How many people are you actually reaching there that need a bouldering pad? 100%

You'd be a lot more confident knowing that your money was well spent. Knowing the obsessive nature of boulderers, and knowing that you can actually moniter how many people who "click through" to your bouldering website how could you ignore the internet. It would be madness.

It would be madness to ignore print too.

You've got to do both, although as regards reaching your target audience I think the web wins if...and this is a big if....if the content is rich enough to get a big following.......(the accessibility and the immeadiacy aside)

M

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

content rich.....and specific....

I meant to say.

M

In reply to Simon Panton:

For the record Mick started this thread of his own back without any prompting from UKC.

Personally I’m not that bothered about the circulation figures. Simon is right in many ways that they are incredibly difficult to compare with mag circulation and if it came down to it I would not hang the commercial legitimacy of the UKC on them.

The only point I am really interested in getting over is that I know from personal experience that online advertising can work. It’s not a ‘no brainer’, you still have to use your imagination and come up with creative ideas but its new, its evolving and it will be made to work.

In reply to Andy Hyslop - UKC:

A better method is count the number of individual computers the website is accessed from each day. Technically it's fairly easy to do this using cookies.


Have you seen number 3 though? I don't think many climbers would consider that to be a good website. And climbing.co.uk is still in the top 50, although it's been dead for at least a couple of years.

Perhaps you could quote http://directory.google.com/Top/Recreation/Climbing/By_Region/Europe/United... instead - you're number 1 there! Although I have a feeling the number 3 in that list isn't one of the best sites around...

In reply to Mick - Rockfax USA:

I defintely would!

...but its too late to justify that statement. Good night.

In reply to Andy Hyslop - UKC:

He sure did. I in know way profit from ukclimbing.com but I know its strength and potential....a stronger and more informed ukclimbing community.

- climbers are more informed about the inner workings of the BMC because of ukclimbing

- they can discuss ethical matters in a more open forum with wider viewpoints than in a closed forum that you find in magazines

- access concerns can be immeadiately be communicated

The list is endless.......a new winter climbing area on the Med.....go here for info http://www.rockfax.com/miniguides/index.html ........and info that is always accessible....

- you can find mates to go climbing with...or even to marry....

- a fantastic collection of photographs

- a directory of all climbing walls and climbing areas in the UK

and on and on...

Mick

In reply to mav:

I agree that pop-up type advertising is very unsuccesful. But I can't agree that there is no succesful advertising on the web. Ever notice those links on the right of the screen when you do a google search? That's advertising, tailored to exactly what you're looking for - and it works.

In reply to innes:


No, because I use Mozilla & an ad-blocking stylesheet. The sponsored links never appear in my browser - that's the way I like it.

In reply to Andy Hyslop - UKC: Thanks Andy for getting back to the crux of the matter. I agree with you, it is an evolving form and I am just as interested as anyone in exploring the imaginative use of the internet.

One of my jobs is to write the editorial material for www.snowdonia-active.com and every month I see our figures pushing up and up. This does make me feel very good about what we're doing, but I do wonder about the reality behind the figures, and I genuinely want to get a grasp on what it all means.

I think it is easy to compare website with website, but when you start cross referencing 'circulation' or even just the general principle of 'significance' or market presence with other forms of media, it starts to sound shaky to me.

Anyway, I'll talk to my techy man (and guide designer) Mark Lynden tommorrow and get his angle on all this, because I don't actually know what I'm talking about, and judging by Dominion's response it could be that the truth lies somewhere in the ill-defined-grey-middle-ground.

As Mick is want to say, its good to engage.

Simon.

In reply to Anonymous:

At home I use Safari with the popup blocker on (and java off). But there have been several occasions when I've used a sponsored link from google and I've found them pretty useful.

I did write to Egg though and tell them that if one of their java spaceships ever appeared on my machine at work again then I would be taking my large credit card bill to another company. Strangely, I haven't seen one since.

In reply to simon panton:

What maths is behind this? surely 10 visits a day with 20 days at work per month is 200 'people' or is 40 reflecting the fact that although dynamic there are a limited number of addresses to cycle through?

In reply to Matt:
Also another thing that has to be taken into account is the fact there are multiple forums. I usually accesss via rockfax but If I go to jagged globe, then I show up as a new user evn though 'matt' is still logged in.

This used to be the case for ukclimbing aswell but I once logged in there so now I show up as matt, although in trying to log out to test if this worked I found a problem with the logout procedure (if any site people are reading)

When I logged out of ukclimbing I was still logged in on RF and UKC but if I clicked on logout options it said I was not registered also if I clicked forum latest then I was registered, although if I clicked on the individual forums then I was logged out. I then logged back in on UKC but I'm still having problems with being logged out when I click on RF RT individual forum.....if that makes any sense???? If not in a nutshell if you use RF and UKC and logout on UKC it f**ks up.

In reply to Matt: Thanks for pointing this out Matt. Not only am I thoroughly 'IT illiterate', but a dunce at basic maths to boot! (Mind you, no-one else spotted the mistake.) You are absolutely right about the figures, and it seems that the case I was trying to make was actually a lot stronger than I originally thought.

Simon.