The latest survey to be released in Australia has shown that online properties produced by newspaper publishers are attracting the same demographic as the traditional forms.
According to the results of the Online Readership Survey conducted by Sydney-based APT Strategies, there is a high degree of duplicated readership among the leading sites which are aiming for the same demographic.
APT Strategies director Marc Phillips, said the survey of 13,114 respondents confirmed that the Internet audience is converging with the users of traditional media. He added that the survey represents the first time that media buyers in Australia have access to information which details the duplication of the audience among popular Web sites.
“This will allow media buyers to cost-effectively plan their spend on the Web,” he said. “If they want to reach as many people as possible, then they can now use those popular sites with a low degree of duplication. But if they want to really hit a particular demographic, they can use
those sites with a higher level of duplication.”
The survey reviewed some of the most popular Web sites in the country. Previously, little was known about the specific demographics of the visitors to particular Web sites. The profile of Australian Net users was based on more general research produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The survey has been endorsed by newspaper publishers such as John Fairfax and News Limited, while the popular portals such as ninemsn and Yahoo! declined to be included in the latest report (although these sites were still measured).
“With the profiles from the readership survey, we can finally target beyond webographics (user’s browser, platform, domain) and site content with a range of buyergraphic and psychographic variables,” said Dale McCarthy, the national marketing manager of Fairfax Online.
For example, of the people who used the Yellow Pages site at least once per month, some 50 percent also visited The Australian Financial Review site, owned and operated by John Fairfax.
At the lower end, of those people who visited the AFR site in one month,
only 26 percent also visited the main News Limited site.
