Study Finds Newspapers Failing On The Net

News International last week announced plans to plough investment into a relaunch of its Times website in an attempt to transform it into the UK’s most popular online news service. Its plans coincided with a new study from Forrester Research which found that many newspaper-based internet sites are failing to use the web to its full potential. Comparing the circulation figures between net-based newspapers and print versions brings up some surprising results:

In the latest ABC audit the print version of the Sun sold an average of 3.6 million copies per issue, making it the most popular daily paper in the country; its sister website, on the other hand, takes just 2 million page impressions a month, according to the publisher’s statement. However, the FT, in print selling just under half a million copies per day, is receiving upwards of 23 million page impressions a month on its FT.com site. Times.co.uk takes around 12 million page impressions per month, whilst the newspaper sells 720,000 copies an issue.

Embracing the internet is important for newspapers as the traditional revenue source of classified advertising is seriously threatened by the emergence of web-based classifieds databases that are undercutting the papers’ rates. As well as this, newspaper publishers have on the whole been concentrating on moving their content online whilst portal sites like Yahoo have already integrated news with users’ other personalised information. This leaves the print brands that are just starting to do this somewhat behind the game.