A delegate takes one end and Martin Clarke unrolls a printout of his home page, which extends halfway to the back of the hall.

Yes, the homepage is as long as the famous headlines, but the MailOnline – which began as a newspaper website restricted from publishing more than six stories a day – is now the biggest newspaper site in the world. Bigger (in January 2013) than the People’s Daily online, the New York Times, or of course UK rival The Guardian. Earlier this year, Clarke placed it behind only msn (home and news pages), Yahoo, and CNN. And incidentally, bigger in the USA than it is in its home country, coming in third after USA Today and the NYT.

And now, like the Guardian, it is coming to Australia, capitalising on a market which is already its third-largest – after the UK and USA – and growing at 65 per cent year-on-year.

That decision not to integrate print and digital editions of the UK – out of reluctance to upset print’s substantial profits – has led to a product evolution in which the overlap is only 14 per cent. Clarke says the publisher is “not eating our own lunch” and of course, down here in the antipodes, people don’t buy the weekly print editions for their Australian coverage.

A very simple formula is instead “what readers liked”. While views come from readers who search for the Daily Mail, the site’s growth has been driven by those who stay and look around. And has been achieved without spending money on marketing to readers. “If you’re doing it right,” Clarke says, “you shouldn’t need to.”

The irony is that the site’s breathlessly long headlines risk telling so much of the story that there’s no need to click to find out what happened. But they do, with the intriguing hooks pulling readers in. Video is now also a key component, with a team of nine video editors one of the largest in the UK.

Mail claims real time analytics show only Yahoo, Facebook and Google have higher engagement times.

But show me the money: With no paywall – and no apparent intention of getting one – transactional opportunities have become important: MailOnline uses devices such as ‘Femail Fashion Finder’ to help readers with clothing options, and to lead them to purchase. “The click-to-buy’ rate goes up daily, and advertisers “come knocking on our door,” he says.

Native advertising is a current growth area, and while it has to “delight” readers, puffs on the right-hand row fetch £50,000 ($91,000) apiece.

So MailOnline is investing in its own growth while the opportunity presents. the cooperation with Nine will bring mutual benefits, especially when the latter is buying Microsoft out of the joint venture as part of its share listing arrangements.

The Australian launch is further proof of the global market with which publishers must come to terms. By contrast, Fairfax Media’s smh.com.au site has been building its UK audience for years, but without the local focus the Mail delivers… and possibly, without the revenue.

Peter Coleman