Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany's international broadcaster, showed record traffic to its online offerings in March. Visits to DW's sites were up by 47 percent compared with the average for the previous six months.
Nearly 155 million hits and interactions were registered on DW's sites, more than in any month before. Users on Twitter and Facebook alone jumped 68 percent. Video views on dw.de and Youtube climbed 37 percent. Views on www.dw.de more than doubled, reaching over four million in March.
The dramatic rise can be mainly attributed to DW offerings in Ukrainian and Russian. The crisis in Crimea and Ukraine led to a high demand for DW's online offerings. The total visits to dw.de/russian grew to more than 6.4 million, a 250 percent increase. For dw.de/ukrainian the total number of visits saw a rise of 260 percent, climbing to 2.2 million.
DW's Indonesian website (dw.de/indonesian) also contributed to the record breaking figures, registering 700,000 visits, an increase of more than 200 percent. It was largely DW's coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that brought the increase in traffic to the Indonesian site.
"The numbers reflect the growing relevance of Deutsche Welle in international media markets. At the same time, these figures reaffirm the recent changes to our programming," said DW Director General Peter Limbourg. "With new offerings and courageous journalism we can significantly expand our audience reach and increase relevance to global decision-makers," he said.
The strong growth in online traffic also came from the show AlBernameg (The Program) by the Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef. The first five episodes of the show were viewed a total of 1.4 million times on the DW Arabic website. They are to date DW's most frequently viewed web videos.
The Russian-language daily web TV magazine Geofaktor has also contributed to the record online traffic since it was launched on March 15. By the end of the month it had already been viewed 430,000 times. The program was viewed a further 50,000 times on Youtube. In total, Russian-language videos registered about 850,000 views.
The benchmark which Deutsche Welle's Market and Media Research department used to analyze the monthly reports on online traffic was the average for the six preceding months. (For March 2014, the analysis was based on the average value for the period September 2013 to February 2014.)
Nearly 155 million hits and interactions were registered on DW's sites, more than in any month before. Users on Twitter and Facebook alone jumped 68 percent. Video views on dw.de and Youtube climbed 37 percent. Views on www.dw.de more than doubled, reaching over four million in March.
The dramatic rise can be mainly attributed to DW offerings in Ukrainian and Russian. The crisis in Crimea and Ukraine led to a high demand for DW's online offerings. The total visits to dw.de/russian grew to more than 6.4 million, a 250 percent increase. For dw.de/ukrainian the total number of visits saw a rise of 260 percent, climbing to 2.2 million.
DW's Indonesian website (dw.de/indonesian) also contributed to the record breaking figures, registering 700,000 visits, an increase of more than 200 percent. It was largely DW's coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that brought the increase in traffic to the Indonesian site.
"The numbers reflect the growing relevance of Deutsche Welle in international media markets. At the same time, these figures reaffirm the recent changes to our programming," said DW Director General Peter Limbourg. "With new offerings and courageous journalism we can significantly expand our audience reach and increase relevance to global decision-makers," he said.
The strong growth in online traffic also came from the show AlBernameg (The Program) by the Egyptian political satirist Bassem Youssef. The first five episodes of the show were viewed a total of 1.4 million times on the DW Arabic website. They are to date DW's most frequently viewed web videos.
The Russian-language daily web TV magazine Geofaktor has also contributed to the record online traffic since it was launched on March 15. By the end of the month it had already been viewed 430,000 times. The program was viewed a further 50,000 times on Youtube. In total, Russian-language videos registered about 850,000 views.
The benchmark which Deutsche Welle's Market and Media Research department used to analyze the monthly reports on online traffic was the average for the six preceding months. (For March 2014, the analysis was based on the average value for the period September 2013 to February 2014.)
