• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 23, 2010

Newspaper Web sites drew a record-breaking average 74.4 million unique visitors per month in the first quarter of 2010, according to new figures from Nielsen Online released by the Newspaper Association of America. That's up from 72 million unique visitors in the fourth quarter of 2009, and represents the highest quarterly average in history.

In proportional terms, the first-quarter number equals 37% of all U.S. Internet users. These visitors generated a monthly average of just under 3.25 billion page views per month from January-March, spending an average 2.34 billion minutes in over 592 million sessions per month -- or an average 31:32 per person, divided among just under eight sessions per month.

On average, newspaper Web site visitors viewed 44 pages per month.

Because this data was generated by Nielsen Online using a new methodology introduced almost a year ago, Nielsen and the NAA warn that year-over-year comparisons may not be statistically valid. With that caveat in mind, a superficial comparison of this year's stats with 2009's suggests the total newspaper Web audience increased 1.5% from a monthly average of 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.

However, the total number of page views appears to have declined somewhat (8%) from 3.54 billion, while the number of visits per person stayed roughly the same (8.1 in the first quarter of 2009).

The increasing online audience numbers come as some major newspaper publishers report a rebound in their digital advertising revenues in the first quarter of 2010.

On Thursday, the New York Times Co. announced that digital-advertising revenues increased 18%, compared to the first quarter of 2009 to $80 million, while revenues at the About.com group -- which is counted separately -- increased 29.3% to $34.7 million.

Separately, McClatchy announced that digital-ad revenues rose 2.2% in the first quarter to $46.8 million.

However, digital ad revenues remain a fairly small part of the newspaper business overall -- and they will have to deliver sustained growth to come anywhere near making up for catastrophic print losses over the last couple years.

After peaking at $49.3 billion in 2005, total newspaper ad revenues declined 44% to $27.6 billion in 2009, according to the latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America.