NEWSPAPER WEB SITE AUDIENCE RISES TWELVE PERCENT IN SECOND QUARTER TO NEARLY 66.4 MILLION VISITORS

Arlington, Va. – Newspaper Web sites attracted nearly 66.4 million unique visitors on average (40.2 percent of all Internet users) in the second quarter of 2008, a 12.2 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of just over three billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared with nearly 2.7 billion during the same period last year.

“The Internet has become the news destination of choice for many sophisticated consumers and newspaper companies continue to meet their evolving demands,” said NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm. “The latest audience figures provide further evidence that newspapers’ digital properties deliver highly-accurate and hyper-local content that consumers can’t find anywhere else.”

As newspapers continue to grow their audiences online, NAA has created a new online destination for advertisers: www.newspapermedia.com. The site, redesigned in flash format, highlights the benefits newspapers’ multi-platform offerings provide advertisers, complete with enhanced details on reader engagement, ad ideas, audience data, production specifications and much more.

“With newspaper sales staffs placing an unprecedented emphasis on digital advertising, newspapermedia.com offers the information they need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medium’s multi-platform offerings,” said Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of Business Development. “We have loaded the site with the latest data and research, captivating slides for presentations and a section on advertising ideas that have proven highly effective.”

From Nielsen Online:

Source: Nielsen Online Custom Analysis

 Source: Nielsen Online Custom Analysis

The Nielsen Online newspaper total represents a de-duplicated visitor total taken from its combined home and work panel of Internet users (i.e. an individual who might read a national newspaper plus their local newspaper online is only counted once). The target sample (2 years or older) has access from a non-shared PC at work and/or access from home. The Nielsen Online monthly newspaper total represents the de-duplicated reach of a custom list of hundreds of sites collectively.

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $56 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. NAA members include daily newspapers, as well as non-dailies, other print publications and on-line products. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va., the Association focuses on the major issues that affect today’s newspaper industry: public policy/legal matters, advertising revenue growth and audience development across the medium’s broad portfolio of products and digital platforms. Information about NAA and the industry also may be found at www.naa.org.