The audience for US newspaper websites is growing at nearly twice the rate of the overall online audience. An average of more than 59 million people (37.6 per cent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper websites each month during the first quarter this year, a record number that represents a 5.3 per cent increase over the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen//NetRatings NetView. During the same time period, the overall Internet audience grew just 2.7 per cent.
“The fact that the newspaper website audience is growing at almost double the rate of the Internet audience as a whole validates the industry’s investment in digital innovation, and the ongoing attraction consumers have to newspapers online,” said Newspaper Associaitonof America (NAA) President and CEO John F Sturm. “Newspaper publishers have aggressively transformed their business models, continually providing ground-breaking content to consumers with their expanding digital portfolios.”
Custom data by Nielsen//NetRatings Plan, released during the NAA annual convention in New York earlier this month, provided further details on the consumers behind the growing newspaper website usage. According to the data, visitors to these sites have higher household incomes, shop online more frequently and are more likely to hold professional or managerial positions than other Internet users.
“This data underscores the value newspaper Web sites offer advertisers with their ability to attract a discriminating, high-income audience,” Sturm said. “The educated, highly engaged consumers who visit these sites for news and research on the latest products are also more likely to make purchases online than other Internet users.”
Shawn Riegsecker, chief executive officer of Centro, a Chicago-based company that works with interactive media agencies to facilitate online ad buys, said: “It’s no surprise newspapers are attracting online readers at this incredible rate. As consumers become more sophisticated in navigating the Web, they are turning to trusted sources of news and information, like newspapers, instead of content aggregators or portals. This couldn’t be better for the industry, as newspapers control more of this information than any other medium. As newspapers continue to invest in their digital properties and produce world-class content, I predict they will capture a much larger percentage of the overall online pie.”
The study found that:
- Nearly 12 per cent (11.9 per cent) of those who have visited a newspaper website have annual household incomes in excess of $150,000 compared with less than one in 10 (9.3 per cent) of the overall Internet audience.
- Nearly nine in 10 (88.1 per cent) newspaper website visitors have made a purchase online in the last six months compared to 78.9 per cent of the overall Internet audience. Four in 10 (41 per cent) newspaper website visitors are employed in professional or managerial occupations compared with one in three (32.7 per cent) of the overall Internet population.
The research also shows newspaper Web site visitors use the Internet more frequently during their daily lives, and are more technologically savvy than the general online audience.
- Nearly 73 per cent (72.6 per cent) of newspaper website visitors go online every day compared with 57.8 per cent of the Internet population as a whole.
- Nearly 42 per cent (41.8 per cent) of those who have visited newspaper websites have viewed streaming video on their computers in the last 30 days compared with 27.4 per cent of the overall Internet audience.
Additional findings include:
- More newspaper website visitors read blogs in the past month than the overall Internet population (28.4 per cent vs 16.7 per cent).
- More than one in five (23.3 per cent) newspaper website visitors have read about politics or political campaign information online compared with 10.8 per cent of the overall Internet population.
- Nearly three in 10 (28.9 per cent) newspaper website visitors have sought out or posted a product review online in the past month compared with 16.1 percent of the overall internet population.
