The Irish Times Web site has become the first in Ireland to be officially audited. The Audit Bureau of Circulation, the same organisation which certifies newspaper sales, has measured The Irish Times Web site as having 396,000 users for last October, with more than 4 million "page impressions" or individual web page accesses.
The Irish Times is the busiest Web site in Ireland. According to Mr Richard Foan of ABC //electronic, the electronic publications arm of the ABC, 41 media sites in Britain and Ireland have registered. The Irish Times on the Web was the first in Ireland and the third-largest to be certified.
The certification procedure would give advertisers the information necessary for making decisions and the ability to make real comparisons with other sites, he said.
Mr Foan was speaking at the official announcement of the audited figures and at the official launch of a newly developed Irish Times on-line product, The Irish Times on the Web appointments site, which is already the most accessed recruitment site. It includes information about working and moving to Ireland, reflecting the fact that more than 70 per cent of those who access The Irish Times on-line live outside Ireland.
Mr Seamus Martin, editor, electronic publishing, The Irish Times, said electronic newspapers produced in countries with a diaspora had an advantage. However, Ireland had an added advantage in that the fourth or fifth generation Irish-American, for instance, could access The Irish Times on the Web because there were no language difference. The managing director of Itronics Ltd, The Irish Times electronic publishing division, Mr Seamus Conaty, said the launch of the recruitment site was "a significant step forward for The Irish Times on the Web and the first of many new product launches." He recalled that at its launch in 1994, it was the first newspaper on-line in Britain and Ireland. It was also among the first 30 newspapers in the world to offer an online service. In its first month it achieved 250,000 "hits"; today it gets a million a day.
The general sales and marketing manager, Ms Maeve Donovan, said The Irish Times was one of the first newspapers worldwide to embrace fully the transition from being in the newspaper business to being a part of a broader information industry.
This defined The Irish Times's competence as the ability to deliver news, information and opinion to the highest standard, to create premium advertising vehicles and to provide a higher standard of service to all customers than they received elsewhere.
"It was our view that the brand values established through this competence could be effectively leveraged outside of the domestic context. To achieve this required us to redefine our concept of The Irish Times market, recognising that The Irish Times had the ability to address a growing audience outside our national boundaries."
From an early stage The Irish Times on the Web carried advertising, mainly in the form of links to corporate advertisers sites, Ms Donovan said. As the advertising strand developed, the challenge to The Irish Times was to expand the range of services offered and to support those services with reliable research which supported the sales of print advertising.
Mr Pat McKenna of the Irish Trade Board said due to its presence on the site it was receiving 300 extra hard inquiries a month, representing a quantum leap in the organisation's traffic.
Also at the launch were Mr Conor Brady, editor of The Irish Times, Mr Pat O'Hara, managing editor, and Mr Louis O'Neill, chief executive and group managing director of The Irish Times.