comScore Reports Fast Growing U.K. Online Newspaper Market Attracting Even Larger Foreign Audiences

The Sun Online Ranks as the Most Popular U.K. Newspaper Site While 3/4 of Visitors to Mail Online Come From Outside the U.K.

London, U.K., May 13, 2009 -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the results of a study examining domestic and worldwide visitation to leading U.K. newspaper sites, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. In total, 15.9 million people in the U.K. visited a newspaper Web site in March, representing a 43-percent reach of the country’s online population.

U.K. Newspapers Enjoy Healthy Domestic Growth Online

The Sun Online was the most popular online newspaper in the U.K. in March, growing 8 percent versus year ago to 4.6 million visitors. Guardian.co.uk ranked second with 4.3 million visitors, followed by Telegraph.co.uk (3.9 million visitors), the Mail Online (3.5 million visitors) and the Times Online (3 million visitors). The majority of the top ten newspaper sites achieved double-digit growth versus year ago, including Metro.co.uk, which grew 75 percent to rank as the fastest-growing.

* Based on a selection of individual online newspaper titles; excludes group newspaper properties.
** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
*** Includes traffic to News of the World sites.

U.K. Newspapers Draw International Audiences

While online U.K. newspapers draw substantial domestic audiences, most attract even larger international audiences. Specifically, the Mail Online derived 73 percent of its worldwide audience from outside of the U.K., followed by FT.com (67 percent), and Metro.co.uk (61 percent). Even Thisislondon.co.uk, the Web site of London-focused newspaper the Evening Standard, derived 48 percent of its total traffic from outside of the country.

“Traditional U.K. newspaper brands have proven to be very popular online, both here in the U.K. and around the world,” said Mike Read, SVP and Managing Director, comScore Europe. “Whether or not these titles choose to switch to subscription-based models, at the possible expense of audience attrition, remains to be seen. However, we can be certain that the online medium has enabled U.K. newspapers to attract substantial incremental readership from other countries – audiences that were not nearly as accessible in the days of print-only publications.”

* Based on a selection of individual online newspaper titles; excludes group newspaper properties.
** Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
*** Includes traffic to News of the World sites.

Other notable findings from the report include:

* Of the 15.9 million U.K. Internet users who visited a newspaper site in March, 72 percent were from the ABC1 social grade and 63 percent were under the age of 45.
* 35 percent of the total 2.4 million visitors to FT.com came from the U.S. in March, compared with the 33 percent who accessed the site from within the U.K.
* Of the 48 million mobile phone subscribers in the U.K. in February, 11.9 million accessed news and information via browser or download.

Source: comScore, Inc.