Fake News?
The Australian newspaper today claimed 1,803,000 print readers of their Monday to Friday newspaper – fake news? Roy Morgan average issue readership of The Australian (Monday to Friday) is 291,000 (down 12,000 in a year) and The Weekend Australian 547,000 (down 38,000 in a year).1
The Australian also reported a year-on-year increase of 800,000 online readers to 1,892,000 an 80% increase. 2
Unfortunately News Corporation does NOT subscribe to any Roy Morgan data which is Australia’s only independent source of all media measurement - Roy Morgan media audience estimates have been the measurement ‘currency’ for nearly 50 years history.
Many have been critical of audience claims by Facebook, Google, etc. It is important that all audience information used by media in Australia to sell marketers advertising space is accurate. News Corp should only use and support accurate media measurement data! A correction in tomorrow’s The Australian is not enough.
[1] Roy Morgan reports net readership in an average 7 days for print and net website visitation and app usage in an average 7 days for digital. The Roy Morgan Cross-Platform audience is 7 days net. The Emma figures use a broad and misleading 4 week net figure which inflates audience numbers by lengthening the period of measurement substantially.
Following this logic one could lengthen the period of measurement to 12 months to achieve a higher net figure that would have even less meaning for the day-to-day business of publishers.
[2] The Roy Morgan digital audience of The Australian (website visitation and app usage in an average 7 days) is slightly down year-on-year to 1,812,000 (down 91,000 in a year)
For comments or more information please contact:
Roy Morgan - Enquiries
Office: +61 (03) 9224 5309
askroymorgan@roymorgan.com
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
