Times online attracts 75% of its audience from the UK

The Times and Sunday Times‘ online offering attracts the majority of its audience from the UK.

Speaking to MediaWeek, News International’s chief marketing officer Katie Vanneck said the Times paywall has created a significantly larger UK bias than any other newspaper, with 75% of its audience based in the UK.

By comparison, the MailOnline has a 36% domestic audience; Telegraph.co.uk has a 34%; the Guardian.co.uk has 42% and Independent.co.uk. has 43%.

“Within four months, we’ve seen a 40% growth in our subscriber numbers if you look at our total multichannel reach of subscriptions,” Vanneck said.  “We’ve got over 200,000 subscriptions across all our different channels… For the iPad, which is probably more intuitive for a digital-reading experience than a browser-based experience, we’re seeing 74% of all subscribers coming once a day or more.

“It’s not about The Times delivering a huge audience, where we don’t know who they are, they are C2DE, they are not engaged in the brand, they don’t have a relationship with it… You are never going to create the emotional connection that you need for The Times in order to deliver the right platform for brand advertising [if that is the case].

“We’ve got to re-educate consumers about the value of our product. The metrics that matter are about frequency, they are about engagement, they are about building platforms.

“To know you can actually grow your audience, your paid audience, the right audience, in a way that actually is delivering the future platforms for our advertising partners to build their brands on too.”

Vanneck’s comments come a week after News International confirmed that 105,000 people have paid to access either The Times or Sunday Times’ websites and/or its iPad and Kindles apps.