Newsbrands attract record online visits in Olympic opening surge

New audience figures released by Newsworks show that online national newspaper websites attracted record levels of activity in the opening days of the Olympic Games.

Data compiled by comScore shows that newsbrand sites saw an increase of over nine million visits over the opening weekend – an increase of 57% on the comparative period from a year ago.

Time spent on newsbrand sites also hit new heights with an increase of 65%. On the Friday of the opening ceremony alone, newsbrand sites delivered over 13 million pages to UK internet users, a 22% increase on the same Friday in 2011.

The audience boost from the Olympics’ opening weekend is equally evident from comparison with the audiences for earlier weekends in July 2012, with visits up 14% on the final weekend of the month. In total more than 30 million pages of online newspaper content were read over the opening Friday to Sunday weekend.

Rufus Olins, CEO, Newsworks, said: “London 2012 has been called the first truly digital Olympics and these figures show that online newspaper sites attracted record numbers of visitors in the opening days of the Games.

“As exciting and groundbreaking as these figures are, the total digital figure is doubtless far higher because this data does not yet include consumption of digital newsbrand content via mobiles or tablets.”