Tourism Minister spruiks website hits and media chatter as a win for ‘Old Mate’

South Australians made plenty of noise about the Old Mate ad, but he might be crying tears of joys at the tourism minister’s latest figures on his impact on visitors — to a website, that is.

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Backers of the Old Mate South Australian tourism campaign could have the last laugh, according to the minister responsible for getting more visitors to the state.

Tourism Minister David Ridgway is wielding new audience numbers as a defence to criticism of the campaign.

“The ad was designed to have cut-through and to get people talking,” Mr Ridgway told state parliament yesterday.

“Isn’t it great that today people are still talking about the ad?

“It’s actually what the creative people wanted; to talk about the ad.”

Mr Ridgway said exposure had a cumulative reach of nine million people and an advertising space ratio of more than $2.1 million, including high-profile TV shows such as The Project, Sunrise and Today.

“From Sunday the 1st to Monday the 9th at only at the beginning of this week the campaign was mentioned some 407 times in the published media,” he said.

He said on the weekend of September 7 and 8, there were 21,498 and 22,201 domestic visits, to southaustralia.com, which are “the two highest days of domestic tracking ever recorded” on the website.

Opposition tourism spokeswoman Zoe Bettison said Mr Ridgway was ignoring the flood of negative publicity.

“The Minister is backing his ‘Old Mate’ campaign and is ignoring all the negative commentary,” she said.

“Minister Ridgway can celebrate how many people will visit a website, but what really matters is how many people will visit South Australia and how much money they will bring to our economy.”

Originally published as Tourism Minister spruiks website hits and media chatter as a win for ‘Old Mate’