What is Total Audience?

The Total Audience metric addresses a common audience measurement gap by providing the total readership across the publishers who pick up a story from Stacker. 

Why we developed the Total Audience metric?

In a perfect world, every publisher’s site would retain our tracking pixel so we can see exactly how many readers engage with our content. However, some legacy content management systems (CMS) don’t support the pixel, leaving us without direct page view data. Without a consistent tracking pixel across all publishers, our reported audience would otherwise look artificially low. Our new Total Audience metric solves this challenge by combining verified page views (from pixel-supported sites) with a conservative estimate of page views (from sites with no pixel), giving you a more accurate picture of every story’s reach.

This metric ensures that when certain publishers can’t provide verified page views, we still capture a reliable estimate. By bridging this data gap, the Total Audience metric:

  • Shows the scope of a story’s readership
  • Provides accurate comparisons across multiple publishers and timeframes
  • Helps identify hidden opportunities for increased syndication

How Total Audience is Calculated

Step 1: Analyzing Our 500,000-Pickup Dataset

Our methodology begins with a robust sample of more than 500,000 pickups from the past year. Each pickup represents a publisher syndicating one of our stories. For every pickup:

  1. If we have verified page views (the pixel remained intact), we record that count.
  2. If the pixel was not present, we temporarily record zero page views for that pickup.

From these combined records, we calculate the median number of page views across the entire 500,000+-pickup dataset. This median is intentionally conservative, as it includes the zeros from publishers where page views aren’t directly tracked.

Step 2: Factoring in Publisher Audience Size

In addition to page view data, we track each publisher’s total audience size, sourced from SimilarWeb. Next, we use the media page views figure from Step 1 to compute a visibility score for each pickup in the sample:

Visibility score = Median page views / Audience size

Performing this calculation on all 500,000 pickups yields a different visibility score for each one based on the publisher’s audience size. We then find the median visibility score among these 500,000 values.

This number indicates the typical ratio of page views from a publisher’s total audience and is updated periodically to reflect recent data.

Step 3: Generating Your Total Audience

When a new story is published, we track verified page views through our pixel for the publishers who support it. For any publisher pickup without a functioning pixel, we estimate page views using the median visibility score.

Publishing partner’s audience size x median visibility score = Estimated audience per pickup

We then add these estimated page views to the verified page views to arrive at your Total Audience. For example:

  • A story gets 100,000 verified page views from pixel-enabled publishers.
  • It also gets 70 pickups where we have no pixel data.
  • Using our visibility score, we estimate these 70 pickups from distribution partners earned 20,000 page views, based on the partner’s total audience and the number of page views we typically earn.
  • We combine both figures for a Total Audience of 120,000 page views.

Why It Matters

The Total Audience Metric counters underreporting by including both verified and estimated page views. It accounts for data from thousands of publishers, producing a clearer, more complete look at the audience for your content. By regularly recalculating our median visibility score with fresh data, we stay current with changing audience behaviors and publisher characteristics.

In short:

  • Avoid Underreporting. No more missing out on significant portions of your audience data.
  • Gain Confidence. Make strategic decisions backed by more accurate numbers.
  • Stay Informed. Enjoy ongoing updates that keep the visibility score current and relevant.

Ready to Learn More?

If you have any questions about our Total Audience metric, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re committed to fine-tuning our approach to ensure you have the most accurate, up-to-date view of your story’s overall impact.