A bit of research from Nielsen for the National Newspaper Association made the rounds online today. The headlines were pretty compelling: Newspapers are a big-time consumer destination on the web.
The results of Nielsen’s work are very impressive. In June, newspaper web site had 70.3 million unique visitors, each of whom visited an average of 8.49 times and spent more than 38 minutes on the newspaper site.
This should make newspapers feel good: the numbers tell a story of relevance and habitual use that support the claim that the newspaper franchise can shift its audience relationship onto the web. After all, web readership is higher than print readership.
The economic relationship? Well, that’s a whole different story.
Take a look at the chart to the right.
Newspapers had $34.7 billion of advertising revenue in print in 2008. Online revenue was $3.1 billion.
That means every print subscriber was worth $713.99 of advertising revenue each year. Each online user? $44.10 per year.
At these levels, newspapers would have to have 1.1 BILLION unique users to replace the print revenue.
