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US newspapers' web sites are adding large numbers of readers to their overall circulation, according to two pieces of research out this week. Scarborough Research's integrated data shows encouraging figures for papers as a whole, while The Media Audit looked specifically at gains for alternative weeklies.
Scarborough introduced its Integrated Newspaper Audience metric last year to quantify the combined local market reach of printed newspapers and their web sites, and collects data on the two media from the same group of survey respondents. Information is available for newspapers and their web sites in 80 US markets.
The firm says the 'online exclusive' audience of newspapers – or the audience that visits a newspaper's web site but does not read the printed edition – can account for two to fifteen percent of its integrated audience total, ie the combined print / web site audience. This can add up to hundreds of thousands of additional readers.
Gary Meo, Senior Vice President of the company's Print and Internet Services says the positive headline should counter some of the negativity the newspaper industry has been subject to: 'newspapers are successfully extending their audience online. Newspaper websites are attracting people that may not read the printed paper, resulting in audience growth overall.' Meo says this message needs to hit home with robust data to back it up: 'Demonstrating the strength of the combined print and Internet audience is critical to the future of the newspaper industry and that's what the Integrated Newspaper Audience metric does. It quantifies the newspaper audience in ways that circulation or print readership alone cannot.' The research also dispels another misperception - that young people are not engaged by newspaper content. Meo says newspaper web site audiences are educated, affluent and young.
A white paper, available for download at www.scarborough.com/newspaperstudy/INA-WhitePaper.pdf , draws on the firm's newspaper audience information in the top 25 local U.S. markets and interviews with industry executives to examine the potential of online newspaper audiences. Key factors in success include unique web site content, high local-market Internet penetration, heavy cross-promotion, and integration of the web site into the core newspaper business.
Scarborough's newspaper data is MRC (Media Rating Council) accredited. A joint venture between Arbitron Inc. and VNU Media Measurement & Information, it is online at www.scarborough.com .
The Media Audit studied ninety alternative weeklies and found that the top twenty-five of them had between them added more than two million readers via their web sites.
'These are not gross website visitor numbers, they represent the net gain from the websites', says Bob Jordan, president of MR firm International Demographics, Inc. which publishes The Media Audit. For example, Jordan says the weekly New York Village Voice web site attracts 556,500 readers each month but after elimination of those who also read the print edition the publication's net gain is 242,896.
Jordan says the alternative weeklies didn't immediately embrace web sites but most 'eventually became aggressive' and in the event, many of the smaller publications have achieved the most significant gains.
Thirty-one of the 90 alternatives surveyed added more than 30,000 new readers through their web sites, and only 26 of the 90 failed to gain at least 10,000 new readers. The ten biggest gaining weeklies, in terms of net readership added via web sites, are:
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
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