Notable shift as more blue-collar readers visit sites
By Heidi Dawley Aug 5, 2008
One may not immediately intuit the differences between a City Adventurer versus an Industrial Grit, or even care too, but those differences speak loads about how the internet is changing and how we consume news.
City Adventurer is one of 61 designations in Experian's Mosaic of British lifestyle types, identifying young, single adults who make good salaries and live in major cities like London or Edinburgh.
Industrial Grits are blue-collar sorts who live in smaller industrial towns, work in factories, and are described as family-oriented and self sufficient. In the U.S. the groups have similar-sounding designations.
What happened in both countries is a shift in visitors to newspaper web sites, with more traffic coming from Industrial Grits. Whereas visits were once dominated by City Adventurers, Industrial Grits have been gaining and now appear to be on a par.
Newspaper web site readership now far more closely resembles the makeup of newspapers' print readership, according to new data from Hitwise, the internet trackers, for its News & Media category.
”Broadly speaking we have been seeing that shift as a trend,” says Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise UK.
That's led to faster web growth for papers with strong working-class readership, and a slowing for sites of the so-called quality papers.
”If you look at the ranks of the top News & Media sites in Britain, such as the Guardian, their readers are internet savvy,” says Goad.
”Over time newspapers with less-internet-savvy readerships, such as the Sun and the Mail, are increasing rapidly. They are challenging the Guardian and the Telegraph, as the kind of the people that are Sun and Mail readers are now as likely to be online.”
While Hitwise doesn't release proportions for the internet overall, figures show that in June Industrial Grits represented a higher proportion of visits to the News & Media category than did the City Adventurers, who had dominated in the months before.
Hitwise found that the quality newspapers in which the City Adventurers were more overrepresented in the four weeks ending July 19, 2007 were The Guardian and the Times Online. They were also overrepresented at the Daily Mail.
Industrial Grits were most overrepresented at the Sun, the Daily Mail and then the Times Online.
Numbers from the ABCe, the electronic figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, show that the Mail could be benefiting from the rise in interest from Industrial Grit. The Mail briefly became the UK's most visited online newspaper site in May before falling back to third, behind the Guardian and the Telegraph, in June, according to the ABCe figures.
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Top 25 parent companies Through July 27
#
Parent
Unique Audience (000)
Reach %
Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1
Google
94,215
67.2
0:37:38
2
Microsoft
83,310
59.4
0:44:44
3
Yahoo!
82,584
58.9
1:02:47
4
Time Warner* (Division)
61,567
43.9
1:16:01
5
News Corp. Online
46,092
32.9
0:52:01
6
eBay
34,041
24.3
0:49:51
7
InterActiveCorp
29,971
21.4
0:11:11
8
Apple Computer
23,906
17.0
0:32:45
9
Amazon
23,412
16.7
0:15:14
10
Landmark Communications
22,928
16.3
0:15:28
11
Wikimedia Foundation
22,456
16.0
0:10:05
12
Walt Disney Internet Group
21,913
15.6
0:26:24
13
CBS Corporation
21,796
15.5
0:11:32
14
New York Times Company
21,700
15.5
0:08:31
15
Turner Network (Division)
20,302
14.5
0:20:47
16
AT&T Inc.
18,231
13.0
0:22:54
17
Facebook
17,582
12.5
0:43:21
18
CraigsList
14,824
10.6
0:35:18
19
RealNetworks, Inc.
13,571
9.7
0:20:21
20
Comcast Corp.
13,461
9.6
0:32:30
21
Bank of
America
13,325
9.5
0:20:46
22
Verizon Communications
13,110
9.3
0:16:27
23
E.W. Scripps Company
12,916
9.2
0:05:05
24
United Online
12,476
8.9
0:25:59
25
Viacom Digital
12,469
8.9
0:24:22
Source: Nielsen Online
Top 25 brands Through July 27
Parent
Unique Audience (000)
Reach %
Time spent per person (hh:mm:ss)
1
Google
85,507
61.0
0:26:07
2
Yahoo!
81,263
57.9
1:03:16
3
MSN/Windows Live
63,949
45.6
0:46:38
4
AOL Media Network
54,320
38.7
1:23:11
5
Microsoft
51,800
36.9
0:14:20
6
Fox Interactive Media
39,773
28.4
0:56:00
7
YouTube
36,703
26.2
0:29:38
8
eBay
28,684
20.5
0:52:23
9
Apple
23,906
17.0
0:32:45
10
Wikipedia
22,215
15.8
0:10:06
11
Weather Channel
19,306
13.8
0:17:04
12
Amazon
18,761
13.4
0:14:22
13
Blogger
17,839
12.7
0:06:44
14
Facebook
17,582
12.5
0:43:21
15
Ask Search Network
17,028
12.1
0:10:00
16
CNN Digital Network
15,538
11.1
0:18:32
17
Craigslist
14,819
10.6
0:35:18
18
AT&T
13,833
9.9
0:26:33
19
About.com
13,578
9.7
0:03:23
20
Real Network
13,567
9.7
0:20:21
21
Bank of
America
12,918
9.2
0:20:50
22
Glam Media
11,749
8.4
0:11:36
23
Comcast
9,789
7.0
0:42:28
24
Target
9,213
6.6
0:05:23
25
Wal-Mart Stores
9,095
6.5
0:07:21
Source: Nielsen Online
Top 25 advertisers (excludes house ads)
Through July 27
#
Company
Impressions (000)
1
Experian Group Limited
5,326,534
2
Netflix, Inc.
2,711,075
3
Deutsche Telekom AG
1,580,129
4
Scottrade, Inc.
1,335,648
5
United Online, Inc.
1,045,881
6
Verizon Communications, Inc.
1,045,793
7
Bank of America Corporation
748,692
8
AT&T Corp.
691,926
9
ALLTEL Corporation
669,842
10
InterActiveCorp
519,276
11
Dell Computer Corporation
507,120
12
eBay, Inc.
475,890
13
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
425,838
14
WixAWin.com
416,133
15
Mighty Net, Inc
397,529
16
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
375,747
17
eHarmony.com
368,714
18
FreeScore.com
354,680
19
E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corp.
354,663
20
FRS Company
346,743
21
General Motors Corporation
344,961
22
Wachovia Corporation
340,769
23
Apollo Group, Inc.
307,455
24
Vonage Holdings Corp
300,504
25
Privacy Matters
278,081
Source: Nielsen Online, AdRelevance
Note: Nielsen Online, AdRelevance service estimated online advertising expenditures account for CPM-based image-based advertising. All reported estimated expenditures and impressions do not account for the following placement types: text only, paid fee services, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, in-stream ("pre-rolls") players, messenger applications, partnership advertising, promotions and email campaigns. AdRelevance currently does not report estimated spending for paid search advertising. Also, Nielsen Online, AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL's proprietary service.
Top 25 advertising sites (excludes house ads)
Through July 27
Company
Impressions (000)
1
Yahoo!
17,536,902
2
MySpace
3,222,868
3
MSN
2,568,392
4
Comcast.net
1,413,768
5
MSNBC
1,314,955
6
AOL.com
1,199,765
7
Facebook
688,732
8
eBay
635,963
9
The Weather Channel
578,018
10
IMDb
526,578
11
FOXNEWS.COM
513,352
12
Project Playlist
400,194
13
YouTube
390,106
14
Juno
304,479
15
New York Times
301,907
16
Photobucket
290,581
17
Perezhilton.com
271,904
18
NeoPets
263,941
19
CNN
257,757
20
ESPN.com
244,019
21
AT&T Worldnet
243,782
22
NetZero
223,906
23
TheStreet.com
201,967
24
CNBC
201,890
25
Amazon
190,021
Source: Nielsen Online, AdRelevance
Note: Nielsen Online, AdRelevance service estimated online advertising expenditures account for CPM-based image-based advertising. All reported estimated expenditures and impressions do not account for the following placement types: text only, paid fee services, performance-based campaigns, sponsorships, barters, in-stream ("pre-rolls") players, messenger applications, partnership advertising, promotions and email campaigns. AdRelevance currently does not report estimated spending for paid search advertising. Above data does not include any house advertising activity. Also, Nielsen Online, AdRelevance reporting data reflects advertising activity served on pages accessible via the World Wide Web and not within AOL's proprietary service.
