Nielsen, MRI: Magazine Website Visitors Mostly Incremental to Print Readers

An average of 83 percent of visitors to the websites of 23 large-circulation monthly magazines access those magazines’ content solely online, according to a new, jointly launched single-source database from Nielsen/NetRatings and Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI), reports MarketingCharts.

The database, named Net/MRI will measure consumers’ offline and online media usage, providing a net audience estimate for print media that have complementary websites; it will provide demographic, psychographic and product usage information for users of both platforms, the companies said.

Also according to the newly released magazine website data:

• Among individual magazine titles, the web-only percentages range from 65 percent to 96 percent.
• Male visitors to online magazine sites were more likely than female visitors to read only the online version.
• However, there was little difference between older and younger visitors to these sites in their propensity to read the printed magazines affiliated with those sites.

The companies plan to publish Net/MRI data monthly, shortly after the release of Nielsen/NetRatings’ monthly NetView data.