Local media companies are hooked on the legacy metric of reach, according to Pippa Leary, who spoke at the IAB Leadership conference in Sydney yesterday.

It was something she says she detected very early when she took on her role as managing director, Free News and Lifestyle, News Corp Australia.

"When you are looking at reach only, it means you are KPIing your journalists and your marketers to just chase a number." But, Leary told the delegates when you dig behind the numbers you may well find that the audience is not engaging with your content.

"And if they're not engaging with your content, then you are not delivering any client outcomes."

Leary says that assessment led her team to look at the traffic coming to the sites. "We analysed the number of page impressions and engagement that was coming off that traffic, and we learned very quickly our direct traffic is 10 times more valuable than anything coming from social and five times more valuable than anything coming from search. But what we have seen is years of teams chasing social. It's what we call One and Done, and they are not giving you or your clients any outcomes."

As a result, KPIs have now changed for the team.

"They are now all chasing what we call engaged reach. They have become very focused on engagement because they now know their job is to turn audience engagement into client outcomes."

Leary issued her own mia culpa on the issue. "I'll put my hand up. We've been one of the worst on just chasing empty reach. I think the entire Australian commercial publishing industry needs to go, 'If we keep doing that in five years, we will have run ourselves into the ground'."

She said the new approach is not just good for the business and for clients, it's good for consumers.

"What it means is all of your journalists, all of your editorial staff, suddenly get very focused on what stories, what headlines? How do we write them, what drives the most engagement, scroll, depth, page impressions, and time on site? All of these metrics have now become incredibly important inside News Corp."

- Additional reporting by Andrew Birmingham