ABCe: Sun Online beats December slump
Sun Online has beaten the traditional December drop in users, according to new figures released by ABCe. Out of all the national newspaper sites audited by ABCe the Sun‘s online presence is the only one that actually saw an increase in unique users in December.
Guardian.co.uk remained on top but was down 3.2 million users on November. This is the first time the website’s user numbers have fallen since March of this year.
Telegraph.co.uk remained in second place despite losing 1.9 millions visitors since November. Although there was a month on month fall, Telegraph.co.uk can still boast an extremely impressive YOY increase of nearly 100%.
Although losing 1.2 million online readers over the month, Mail Online still managed to jump up to third position from the previous month’s fourth. In December the Associated Newspapers website saw 19.6 million people log on, with a YOY increase of 44.3%.
Falling to fourth place was Times Online, however, it has seen a year on year increase in users. The number of people logging on to the website has increased by 77% over the past twelve months, with a December figure of 19.1 millions unique users.
Bucking the end of year trend was Sun Online, displaying a month on month increase of over 2.5 million, to take it to 18.9 million unique users. Its page impressions were also up 8 million, 102 million ahead of its nearest rival, Guardian.co.uk.
Independent.co.uk remained second to last with 8.7 million people logging on over December. This might not sound too impressive, but it was also reporting a YOY increase of 165%. Mirror Group Digital was up 900 thousand users – to 5.3 million – since it first began reporting figures in March 2008.
If last year’s trends are repeated user numbers should bounce back to healthier levels in January.
*ABCe defines Unique User as “The total number of unique combinations of a valid identifier, Sites may use (i)IP+UserAgent, (ii) Cookie and/or (iii) Registration ID.” Note that where USERS are allocated IP addresses dynamically (for example by dial-up Internet Service Providers), this definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual USERS concerned.
ABC Electronic: 01442 870 800 www.abce.org.uk