Newspaper Websites Growing

There's an old saying my grandmother used to say, "Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?"

Of course she was refering to pre-marital sex and marriage. But this applies to the impact of the internet too.

I don't know why anyone would pay for a membership to Classmates.com, unless they are unaware of all the free ways to connect via the social networks that are available.

See, in the earlier days of the internet, it was common to have to pay to take full advantage of a website. Now, as more and more of the web is "free" and supported by advertising, the challenge is going to be how to monotinize websites.

Strong newspapers have the content resources, but many are organized so that they generate their income from their printed products, not their web products. And so while my friends in the printing industry adjust their business model, at least they have some good news in the following report:

Record Audiences to Newspaper Web Sites

According to a custom analysis by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper web sites attracted more than 68.3 million unique visitors on average (41.4% of all Internet users) in the third quarter of 2008, a record number that reflects a 15.8% increase over the same period a year ago,

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of just over 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of 25.2% over the same period a year ago (2.8 billion page views). These figures are the highest for any quarter since NAA began tracking the data in 2004.

NAA President and CEO, John F. Sturm, said "... record audiences are trusting newspaper Web sites for comprehensive, up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis on the events that impact their lives... newspapers are the top local brands that readers turn to for information... (to) help (with) challenging issues... "

The third quarter also set records for active reach percentage (the percentage of active Internet users that visit newspapers on an average month), page views, pages per person, time per person and visits per person.

Randy Bennett, NAA's senior vice president of Audience and New Business Development, concludes that "The dramatic increase in page views suggests users are visiting newspaper Web sites frequently throughout the day."

Third Quarter 2008 Newspaper Online Audience
Month	Unique Audience	Active Reach Percentage	Page Views	Pages per person	Time Per Person (mm:ss)	Visits Per Person
July-08	67,952,516	41.21	3,410,220,416	50.19	44:19	8.48
Aug-08	69,313,361	41.52	3,421,605,140	49.36	43:18	8.52
Sept-08	67,703,978	41.53	3,686,180,159	54.45	49:20	9.20
Q3 Average	68,323,285	41.42	3,506,001,905	51.33	45:49	8.73
Source: Nielsen Online Custom Analysis

Third Quarter 2007 Newspaper Online Audience
Month	Unique Audience	Active Reach Percentage	Page Views	Pages per person	Time Per Person (mm:ss)	Visits Per Person
July-07	59,635,245	37.05	2,735,019,015	45.86	40:07	8.00
Aug-07	59,278,593	37.42	2,828,613,489	47.72	41:52	8.22
Sept-07	58,160,770	36.96	2,836,328,492	48.77	43:44	8.15
Q3 Average	59,024,869	37.14	2,799,986,999	47.45	41:54	8.12
Source: Nielsen Online Custom Analysis

For additional information from the NAA, please visit here.

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