Record Audiences For Newspapers Online

While their print editions continued to slide, newspapers enjoyed an online audience boom in 2007, according to the Newspaper Association of America, which says the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites increased 9% in the fourth quarter to an average 62.8 million per month, compared to the same period in 2006. The figure from October, when 63.2 million people visited a newspaper Web site, is an all-time record.

Furthermore, the statistics, compiled by Nielsen Online, show that 39% of all active Web users visited newspaper Web sites during the fourth quarter, for an average 44 minutes per month--a slight increase over last year's fourth-quarter average of 43 minutes, but substantially higher than the 36 minutes in 2004.

In the most recent quarter, the visitors yielded over 3 billion impressions--up 7.3% from the fourth quarter of 2006.

This good news from newspaper Web sites is tempered, however, by the slowing of online revenue growth over the last year. While fourth-quarter totals are not yet available, during the first three quarters of 2007, online revenues totaled about $2.32 billion--a roughly 20% increase over the same period in 2006.

That number is a smaller increase than 2005-2006 in both dollar and percentage terms, when online revenues grew an average 31%.

advertisement

advertisement

Next story loading loading..