David Kaplan
paidContent.org
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 2:07 PM

While newspaper websites drew nearly 66.4 million unique visitors on average?40.2 percent of all internet users? in Q2 for a 12.2 percent year-over-year increase, all those numbers are nearly unchanged from Q1. The data comes from custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.

-- Pageviews stall sequentially too: Newspaper sites' visitors generated an average of just over 3 billion pageviews per month throughout the quarter, compared with nearly 2.7 billion during the same period last year. Again, while those pageview numbers are from that perspective, compared to the previous quarter, they don't seem to have budged a bit, indicating that things may have peaked, at least for now.

-- Slowing growth all around: The numbers suggest that as the newspaper industry struggles with declining print revenues and the constant threat of layoffs, it now has to contend with slowing digital growth on the audience and ad side. In data released by the NAA last month, newspapers' ad revenue slowed sharply in Q1, rising only 7.2 percent to $804 million versus the 22 percent gains posted the year before. Release

Of course, the numbers put out by the NAA fit with what we're seeing from newspapers this quarter: Yesterday, Belo ( NYSE: BLC) reported a decline in online ad revs, as did Lee, last week.

Related

Hard Times For Newspapers Gets Harder, As Q1 Online Ad Growth Stalls At 7.2 Percent Gains

NAA: Newspaper Sites? Traffic Gained 12.3 Percent In Q1