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.
***
|
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
|
