What Little I Know…

In December of 2008, newspaper unique audiences, across the top 10 US papers, grew by 16 per cent when compared to the previous year.  Moreover, and no surprise to anyone who gets the online newspaper space, the number one newspaper site, tracking the highest amount of UMV’s was NYTimes.com, with 18.2 million unique’s in December.  To the same account, the number of total visits to the top 10 sites has also increased, meaning that users are returning at a higher pace than the year previous.

There are some clear common indicators that drove readers to online papers during the year (the economy, the election, foreign affairs as they relate to the US, etc…), but there are some unique items related to the properties and regions on the Top 10 list below that are worth mentioning:

• 30% of the list is based in New York and the New York metropolitan area has the highest population, versus like areas across the US.
• 70% of the list had gone through some sort of “noticeable” site transformation (design, functionality, etc…) over the past 12 months.
• 40% of the list has made strong allegiances with a social networking body aside from the common relationship with Facebook
• 30% of the list has made changes to their print product with hopes of better segmenting the news their audience wants in print versus online and with hopes to better streamline print costs, allowing for a better focus on new media.

Source:   Nielsen Online, January 2009

Aside from the geographical benefits well thought out products from the New York Metropolitan area experience, most of the Top 10 properties have worked hard on increasing the level of stickiness on their site, through both content and relationship strategies and these properties were generally the first to embark on some very radical moves.

There is a lot to learn through studying the growth and transformation pains of any of the above properties.