Online newspaper readership continued to climb in the second quarter of 2005, reaching a peak audience of 43.7 million unique visitors during the month of May, representing nearly 30 percent of all adults online in that period the highest monthly total in 18 months of tracking.
For the second quarter, the audience of online newspapers represented a reach of nearly 29 percent, an increase of 0.15 percent over the previous quarter and a 2 percent rise over the same quarter in 2004, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report for NAA. Compared with May, page views per person were up, averaging more than 40 for the quarter, the average monthly time spent per person averaged greater than 37 minutes.
For comparison’s sake, "current events and global news" from NetRatings’ "News and Information" category averaged more than an 79 minutes and 14 visits per person. Such news consumption fell behind only online gaming, stock trading and e-mail as the most engaging activity for Internet users.
Because engagement is so much the stock-in-trade of online newspapers, NAA also looked deeper into how this involvement is measured by leading online metrics, and whether any sites stood out in this area. For two periods, March to April and April to May, NetRatings ranked its news and information sites separately by time spent or page views per person, at work or at home.
Since May marked a high point in online newspaper traffic, the April-May increase was of higher interest. Six newspaper sites or channels appeared in the top 20 when news and information sites were ranked by the increase in at-work usage in time per person per site. Miami.com was third on this list with 103.3 percent improvement, behind Topix.net (146.4 percent) and Slate (112.5 percent).
SPtimes.com was fifth with a 72.9 percent uptick, Guardian Unlimited showed 61.2 percent improvement and The Seattle Times Online Network showed an increase of 59.5 percent. Among these, The Seattle Times Online Network showed growth in time spent for three successive months. Other newspapers for which this was true include NJ.com, International Herald Tribune, USAToday.com, The New York Post, Newsday and Star Tribune.
The Seattle Times Online Network, Seattle Times Online, USAToday.com News, the Sun-Sentinel, latimes.com, NYTimes.com, Newsday, and MercuryNews.com all accomplished the same feat three successive monthly increases in at-work page views per person. Also attracting notice, Ottaway Newspapers topped the chart in at-work page view per person increases from March to April with an increase of 147 percent.
With all the recent talk among advertisers about "engagement," in other words, it bears noting that newspapers remain a leading "lean forward" medium.
Melinda Gipson is Director, Electronic Media, Newspaper Association of America (NAA)
