Press releases:
- January '07:
'BBC radio websites set standard for weekly users' - December '06:
'Ashes boost Test Match Special's average' - October '06:
'Radio 4 listeners head for Ambridge-on-Line' - September '06:
'Monthly figures reveal record requests for BBC Radio online' - August '06:
'Live events attract large audiences to BBC Radio & Music Interactive' - July '06:
'Listeners flock to online Proms' - June '06:
'World Cup raises Five Live's game' - May '06:
'The Archers sets new online listening record' - April '06:
'Radio 1 site brings in a million users per week' - March '06:
'Listeners tune into 20 million hours of BBC Radio online' - February '06:
'Radio 2 brings Gilmour-on-demand to thousands' - January '06:
'Record month for BBC online listening' - December '05:
'Best of Moyles tops BBC podcast chart' - November '05:
'150,000 hit red button for Radio 1 Gorillaz gig' - October '05:
'Web users consume 15,000 years-worth of BBC Radio' - September '05:
'Evans an interactive hit for Radio 2' - August '05:
'Ashes coverage brings record online listeners' - July '05:
'Over 100,000 requests per week for BBC Radio downloads and podcasts' - June '05:
'Live 8 and Glastonbury bring record online traffic' - May '05:
'Eurovision brings record to Radio 2' - April '05:
'Election brings record users to Five Live site' - March '05:
'Radio 1 receives 72 million page impressions in March' - February '05:
'New BBC Radio Player brings record results' - January '05:
'BBC internet radio users up 70% on 2004' - December '04:
'BBC podcasting sparks Fighting Talk' - November '04:
'Millions flock to BBC Radio online'
Total - All Networks
* Note change from monthly unique user agents to average weekly unique user agents due to impact of cookie churn
Definitions
Page Impressions
One page impression is counted for every successful webpage request that displays the desired content in a user's browser
Unique Users
One unique user is counted for every distinct 'cookie' which has visited a website within a given timeframe (in this instance, a week). A cookie is a small piece of information that a server sends to a user's computer to identify that computer on its return.
On demand listening requests
One on demand listening request is counted for every non-live programme stream requested and successfully delivered via the BBC Radio Player
On demand listening hours
One on demand listening hour is counted for every hour of non-live audio streamed via the BBC's radio websites
Live listening hours
One live listening hour is counted for every hour of live BBC radio streamed online
Downloads
One download is counted for every downloadable file successfully transferred to a user's computer
How the stats are collected and audited
In all cases, only requests that originated external to the BBC are counted. We count no internal traffic.
Page Requests and Unique Users
Page request and unique user data is taken from the BBC web server logs. The data is cleaned to give only those requests that are related to legitimate page requests as defined by ABCe. We then count the number of requests seen for each particular item of content (such as a radio website), and also the number of unique cookies associated with those requests. Each cookie count is de-duplicated (i.e. each cookie is only counted once towards any given piece of content in any given time span).
Play requests and durations for live and on-demand audio
The live and on-demand audio play request and duration data is taken from the BBC media serving logs. Currently the BBC serves two types of media content, Real Media and Windows Media. The data is cleaned to give only those requests that actually resulted in content being listened to by the user (i.e. we successfully serve both data and time to the user). From this cleaned data, we count the number of requests for each item of streamed content, and the duration of the content that was listened to. These figures are then aggregated for each area of content (such as a particular radio show or station).
Auditing
The BBC's website figures are audited twice a year (typically March and September) by ABCe.