The chart tells the story of increasing web site audience numbers from newspaper based sites. MediaPost's "Paper Chase: 40% of Net Users Visit Newspaper Sites" adds to the good statistics released earlier that support optomism for the industry...
"Meanwhile, the actual number of unique visitors in the third quarter of 2009 represents an increase of about 8.5% over the third quarter of 2008, when they came in at around 68.2 million.
This growth is good news for newspapers, especially since it comes in an "off" news year -- one without Olympics or closely contested elections. Last year, some analysts expressed concern that newspaper Web site numbers would remain depressed after reaching record highs in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. But these fears have proven unfounded, as newspaper Web site audiences continue to grow.
Taking a somewhat longer view, the long-term growth of newspaper Web site audiences has been substantial. This year's third-quarter figure of 74 million represents an increase of 82.2% over 40.6 million unique visitors in the third quarter of 2004. Active reach increased from 27.6% of all U.S. Internet users to about 40%.
On the other hand, this impressive growth in audience only serves to highlight newspapers' continuing inability to monetize online audiences at anywhere near the rate of their legacy print products in their heyday.
Total newspaper online advertising revenues have declined for six straight quarters through the second quarter of 2009, according to the NAA. They are likely to continue declining in the third quarter -- in stark contrast to the 8% increase in audience size."