Newspaper Website Audience a Coveted Demographic

The audience for newspaper websites is growing at nearly twice the rate of the overall online audience - and newspaper website visitors have higher incomes and are more likely to shop online than other internet users, according to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), MarketingCharts writes.

More than 59 million people (or 37.6% of all active internet users) visited newspaper websites each month during the first quarter - a 5.3% increase over the same period a year ago, according to a Nielsen/NetRatings NetView custom analysis, the NAA said (via Editor & Publisher). During the same time period, the internet audience overall grew 2.7%.

Key findings from the study:

• 11.9% of those who have visited a newspaper website have annual household incomes $150,000 or more, compared with less than one in 10 (9.3%) of the overall internet audience.
• 88.1% of newspaper website visitors have made a purchase online in the last six months compared with 78.9% of the overall internet audience.
• Four in 10 (41%) newspaper website visitors are employed in professional or managerial occupations compared with one in three (32.7%) of the overall internet population.
• 72.6% of newspaper website visitors go online every day, compared with 57.8% of the internet population as a whole.
• 41.8% of those who have visited newspaper websites have viewed streaming video on their computers in the previous 30 days, compared with 27.4% of the overall internet audience.
• More newspaper website visitors read blogs in the previous month than the overall internet population (28.4% vs. 16.7%).
• 23.3% of newspaper website visitors have read about politics or political campaign information online compared with 10.8% of the overall internet population.
• 28.9% of newspaper website visitors have sought out or posted a product review online in the past month compared with 16.1% of the overall internet population.

More detailed findings are available at the NAA’s Digital Edge blog.