• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, May 8, 2007

The audience for newspaper Web sites is growing faster than the Internet audience at large, according to a study commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America and released Monday. The study, performed by Nielsen//NetRatings, found that a monthly average of 59 million people visited Web sites in the first quarter of 2007--representing 5.3% growth over the same period of 2006. Meanwhile, the pool of total Internet users in the United States grew about 2.7%.

NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm said in a statement that the growth rate "...validates the industry's investment in digital innovation, and the ongoing attraction consumers have to newspapers online." He notes that newspaper publishers have "aggressively transformed their business models, continually providing groundbreaking content to consumers with their expanding digital portfolios."

For advertisers, the NAA data paints an appealing portrait of newspapers' Web audiences, with the average user having a higher household income.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings. 11.9% of Web users who visited a newspaper Web site have an income of $150,000 or more, compared to 9.3% of the overall Web population. They show a greater propensity to shop online, with 88.1% making an online purchase in the last six months versus 78.9% on average. Also, these users are more likely to hold a professional or managerial-level job, with 41% falling in this category versus 32.7% for the general Web population. In terms of Web behavior patterns, 73% are daily Web users, versus 57.8% of the overall Web population--while 42% have viewed streaming video on the Web in the last 20 days, versus just 27.4% for the average Web user.

All that is good news for newspapers, according to Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro: "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."

Although their online audiences are still growing at impressive rates, newspaper companies are having a hard time monetizing those audiences at levels high enough to offset losses from print advertising declines. Worse, the rate of revenue and income growth at many newspaper Web sites appears to have slowed in the first quarter.

Internet revenue rose 21.6% at the New York Times Company--down from 39% average growth in 2006 compared to the previous year. At the Tribune Company, interactive revenues rose 17% to $60 million--a climb-down from 29% average annual growth in 2006, compared to 2005. And The Washington Post saw revenues rise just 10%, compared to 34% for the first quarter of 2006, on a year-over-year basis.