'Cyberspace Boom For National Papers', Sky News

Monday, February 25, 2008

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It is beginning to look like the doomsayers may have been wrong about the long-term future of newspapers, writes James Silver

While it remains the case that the print editions of most of the UK's national titles continue their slow but seemingly inexorable slide, a very different story is emerging in cyberspace.

In figures for January 2008 released by industry body ABC - which has for the first time published monthly print circulation and website unique user data in a single report - newspaper website traffic is soaring.

And where readers go, advertisers will ultimately follow.

The Daily Mail saw its unique users jump from 13,629,821 in December to 17,903,172 last month, a rise of more than 31%.

Executives at News International were also cheering impressive news for Times Online and The Sun.

Buoyed by in-depth coverage of the US presidential race in particular, The Times' unique users leapt by 38.5% to 15,087,130 year-on-year, while The Sun - which had a string of showbiz exclusives including its much-downloaded video footage of Amy Winehouse allegedly smoking a crack pipe - rose nearly 40% to 13,322,535.

Rolling coverage of the US race also helped The Guardian remain the UK's most popular national newspaper site with just under 20 million unique users in January - a year-on-year spike of more than 25%.

But the month's most impressive set of 'electronic' ABCs belonged to the Telegraph titles, which soared a staggering 65% year-on-year to reach 12,348,706 unique users.

The across-the-board rises emphasize the strength of national newspapers as brands whatever the platform, says Mark Gallagher, executive director and head of press at media buying agency Manning Gottlieb OMD.

"When you bear in mind that there are now so many contact-points in terms of news and views sites on the web, for national newspapers to attract such significant levels of traffic is without doubt testament to the strength of traditional media brands."

Yet the sheer scale of the percentage rises in the latest figures has left some executives baffled and searching for an explanation.

According to The Sun's online editor Pete Picton, the paper's website has traditionally seen a rise in January thanks to its coverage of Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother - ever popular with its readers.

However, with this year's replacement show, Big Brother Celebrity Hijack, failing to ignite in terms of TV ratings or column inches, he has been casting around for reasons elsewhere.

"One of our thoughts is that at Christmas a lot of people must have got new gadgets like PDAs, laptops and mobiles with web capabilities," he says.

"But also the paper and the website had a corker month for stories. One of the best was the Amy Winehouse video exclusive which did great stuff for us. If we get the right content, video is where the web works at its best in our sort of market. There was also the Ashley and Cheryl Cole story which did really well with our readers."

But despite their extraordinary rise in traffic, newspaper websites still have a number of key issues to resolve, particularly as far as advertisers are concerned.

These, argues Gallagher, include the high volume of overseas readers who visit UK newspaper websites - who are of little value to domestic advertisers - and the lack of agreement over a universally-accepted system for measuring web traffic.

Although these questions - and more - have yet to be answered, with online circulations booming, Gallagher is convinced that reports of the death of newspapers have been greatly exaggerated.

"It's great to see how well newspapers have translated online," he says. "Ultimately I think there's a very prosperous and healthy future for the industry."

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, February 25, 2008

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