Newspaper Site Visits Soar in Q1 - Visitors Affluent, Multimedia-Savvy, Political

Newspaper websites attracted a record 66.4 million unique visitors per month (40.7 percent of internet users), on average, in the first quarter of 2008 - or 2.3 percent more than in 1Q07, according to a Nielsen Online custom analysis for the Newspaper Association of America, MarketingCharts writes.

Newspaper site visitors generated an average of 3.1 billion pageviews per month for the quarter, compared with slightly less than three billion during the first quarter last year - see table of Q1 2008 vs. Q1 2007 results.

The first quarter unique visitor and pageview figures are the highest for any quarter since NAA began tracking those numbers in 2004, and the largest increase since the third quarter of 2006.

Separately, Nielsen Online @Plan data (spring ‘08) found that newspaper website visitors are more politically engaged, more affluent and more multi-media savvy than the online audience as whole:

• More politically engaged than the Internet population as a whole:
  • Newspaper site users are more than twice as likely to provide frequent advice on politics and current events to others.
  • More than three times as many newspaper readers went online for politics or campaign information “yesterday.”
  • Newspaper site visitors are more than three times as likely to have watched online video concerning politics or public affairs ” last month.”
• A more desirable demographics than the overall internet audience:
  • 31 percent more likely to hold professional or managerial positions
  • 46 percent more likely to have a post-graduate degree
  • 27 percent more likely to earn $100,000 or more annually
• More multimedia-oriented than the internet population as a whole:
  • Newspaper site visitors are 76 percent more likely to have downloaded video or audio “yesterday.”
  • Newspaper site users are twice as likely to have searched the internet on their cell phones or other wireless device “yesterday.”
  • Newspaper site visitors are twice as likely to use iTunes in the past month, 71 percent more likely to provide computer advice frequently and nearly twice as likely to have watched streaming video “yesterday.”
• Big spenders, compared with the overall internet audience:
  • Newspaper website visitors are 59 percent more likely to have shopped online for a new automobile “in the past 6 months.”
  • Those who visit newspaper sites are twice as likely to have taken 3-4 round-trip flights in “the last month.”
  • Newspaper site visitors are twice as likely to have done investment shopping online “in the past 30 days.”

(NAA has a podcast with more information on the research and the online numbers.)

About the data: The Nielsen Online newspaper total represents a de-duplicated visitor total taken from its combined home and work panel of internet users (someone who might read a national newspaper plus the local newspaper online counted is only once). The target sample (2 years or older) has access from a non-shared PC at work and/or access from home. The Nielsen Online monthly newspaper total represents the de-duplicated reach of a custom list of hundreds of sites collectively.

The @Plan consumer database consists of the quarterly survey results of 36,000 active internet users. Active users of the internet are defined as those US adults, age 18 and older, who have visited any site on the World Wide Web in the previous 30 days. The study measures all US web usage, whether occurring at work, home, school or elsewhere. The research measures site usage, demographics, lifestyle characteristics and brand and product preferences for selected product categories.