Visitors to newspaper sites tend to rank above average in terms of wealth, influence, and political awareness, according to the Newspaper Association of America. There are also more of them than ever before. Trouble is, they’re not that dedicated.
Although you can drop all the stuff about the audience’s money and power, think of it in terms of a certain tabloid story. Almost everyone knows what’s going on in Britney Spears’s life; it’s hard not to hear about the disaster at least a couple of times each week. But people don’t plan their days around it, and they quickly return to other activities once the updates are over.
Newspaper Sites’ Glorious Users
Now, to describe the newspaper industry, Alan D. Mutter wrote, “In the first three months of this year, the average amount of time visitors spent on newspaper sites fell by 2.9% to 44 minutes and 18 seconds per month, or less than 1 minutes per day. In the same period, the average number of pages viewed per unique site visitor dropped by 6.6% to 47.2 per month.”
Also, “While the total number of page views rose by 4.9% to a record 9.4 billion for the first quarter of 2008, the increase was far short of the 51.9% increase achieved in 2006 and the 12.6% gain in 2007.”
These stats came even as the AP revealed that newspapers don’t provide much of its revenue anymore.
Its readers may all be attractive decision-makers, but the newspaper industry itself isn’t looking so good or strong.
