Newspaper Web Sites Draw 37% Of Web Users

Visitors Generate More Than 3 Billion Page Views During Last Year’s Fourth Quarter

Arlington, Va. – Newspaper Web sites continued to demonstrate their ability to command the attention of Web users as they attracted an average monthly unique audience of 72 million visitors in the fourth quarter of 2009, more than one-third (37 percent) of all Internet users.

The findings, part of a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America, also indicated that newspaper Web site users generated more than 3.2 billion page views during the quarter, spending more than 2.4 billion minutes browsing the sites.

“These strong and consistent audience figures come as newspaper publishers continue to transition their companies into multiplatform content providers to meet the needs of today’s audience,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “As the economy begins to stabilize, newspaper companies are in position to leverage their trusted brands to reach a highly engaged audience and deliver maximum value to advertisers.”

These audience figures reflect Nielsen's introduction of its new methodology, part of an effort to provide a significantly larger sample size, which allows more newspaper Web sites to be reported with greater depth and granularity. As a result of this change, comparisons with prior year reports are not statistically valid. Further details on this new methodology are available at the conclusion of this release.

*Effective with June 2009 data, Nielsen has made several enhancements to the NetView service, including an increased sample size of more than 230,000 panelists, more granular reporting and improved accuracy and representativeness. Due to the enhancements, trending of previously reported data with current results may show percentage differences attributable to these product enhancements and should only be compared directionally.

Source: NAA