Writing on the wall for papers not investing in online editions

15 September 2007

Less than a year ago, the competition for the title of the UK’s leading newspaper website was a two horse race.

Unlike its competitors, Mail Online has yet to relaunch and still uses a website that has changed little since 2004. Instead, Associated Newspapers, Mail Online’s parent company, has focused on integrating web and print operations, allowing the website to publish the majority of the Daily Mail’s content as it is filed. Although it is in the process of a revamp, which will follow its competitors in giving video, multimedia and user interaction a more prominent role, it believes quality stories and the Daily Mail brand are more important in securing online success.

The ABCe headline figures can be misleading, however. In July, a massive 78% of Mail Online users were living outside the UK, meaning the site had just 2.7m British users. This trend is not unique to the Daily Mail. Recent research by City University estimated that 36% of British newspaper website readers were from the US, with a further 39% from other international locations. In fact, both Guardian Unlimited and Mail Online – which, according to a Nielsen Net Ratings Panel, have over 4m US readers each – both boast more native readers than popular American destinations such as The Boston Globe and New York Post’s websites.

Some sites, most notably Guardian Unlimited, believe they can monetise their international readers, but this is far from easy. Foreign audiences are more disparate and less loyal than British ones and tend to read a single article before moving on. Nor do they always pick British brands for themselves, instead finding the content through third-party news aggregators or search engines such as Google News; the Drudge Report, a US aggregation site famous for breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is responsible for as much as 25% of all US traffic driven to British newspaper sites.

This is where Telegraph.co.uk has the edge: around 40%-50% of its users are in the UK. Based on July’s results, this would give the site somewhere between 3.6m and 4.5m UK users, more than Mail Online.

Telegraph.co.uk will also take heart from the fact that it is growing extremely fast, posting a 27.5% monthly increase on its June ABCe. It attributes its success to a major culture change at the title, which has enabled it to become a round-the-clock news organisation where breaking news and sport are updated 20 hours a day.

Guardian Media Group, the owner of Guardian Unlimited, is trying to introduce similar changes and renegotiate a restrictive trade union house agreement ahead of its move to new offices in Kings Cross in October 2008. Despite investing in online journalism long before its competitors, its digital and print operations are nowhere near as integrated as they should be, while the newspaper operation continues to bleed money.