1. Frequency: The online newspaper Web site user spends more hours online than the general user. More than four in ten newspaper website users (44%) spend an average of ten or more hours engaging in activities online during the past week. More than one in five of those newspaper website users (23%) spend more than an average twenty hours online.
2. Credibility: Branded content brings a higher quality audience. A study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) showed that OPA audiences were more like to buy products and services in a number of key categories, including automotive, entertainment, financial, home, travel and business to business.
3. Targeted: If you want to focus on a particular backyard, advertising in an online newspaper is more personal and more relevant because it is local. Newspapers also publish a plethora of niche sites (youth, women, movie fans, Hispanics, are illustrative) for virtually any demographic advertisers could possibly hope to reach. – “Newspapers know more than ever about their Web audience because of online registration programs and audience segmentation software.”
4. Purchasing power: Nearly one-third (32%) of newspaper website users have incomes of $100,000 or greater compared with 26% of general users. Seventy-nine percent own their own homes and one in ten spent more than $2,500 online in the past twelve months.
5. Content: Excluding e-mail and networking, the most popular online content categories include national local news, sports, financial, medical, and weather information. Newspaper website users are more likely to engage in all of those content categories than the overall internet population as well as do things such as read or contribute to blogs, make travel reservations, and pay bills online.
6. Newspaper online audience keeps growing: Nationally, online newspapers keep growing their audiences. In an average month during the second quarter 2011, newspaper websites had more than 111 million unique visitors and more than 65% of all the active internet universe. (ComScore).
7. High profile: fifty-seven percent of newspaper website users are employed in white collar occupations, as compared with thirty-eight percent of the overall adult population. Nearly one in four (24%) of newspaper website users are in professional and and related occupations. Combined with the newspaper printed product, newspaper media reach nearly eight in ten (78%) of professionals each and every week.
8. Reinforcement: Seventy-four percent of online newspaper users also read the newspaper in the past five days, and repetition increases awareness.
9. Cutting Edge: Newspaper Web site users are more likely to own a smartphone or handheld PC than general website users by nearly 14%. They are also much more likely to spend larger amounts of money purchasing online. Newspaper website users are twenty-four percent more likely to spend $1,000 or more buying online than the general online population.
10. Mix: A variety of recent studies have demonstrated the power of online, when included in a mix with traditional media, to elaborate the brand message. Newspaper print and online products combined have the highest penetration and most desirable audience of any other local medium.
Scarborough Research 2010
