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News and Media Landscape
One in every 24 UK Internet visits in January 2007 went to a website in the News and Media industry, with the BBC accounting for 15.45% of industry visits. News and Media websites have experienced strong growth in the past year, with the market share of visits to the industry up 28% year-on-year in January. Whilst IT Media was the fastest growing News and Media industry (up 57% year-on-year), Print Media websites held their own, up 28% year-on-year in January.
In January 2007, 29% of upstream visits to websites in the News and Media industry came from a search engine, with Google (combined www.google.co.uk and www.google.com) accounting for 78% of those visits.
According to analysis of MOSAICTM lifestyle segments, Hitwise data reveals that the groups that are most likely to read a daily broadsheet newspaper are also most highly represented on websites in the News and Media – Print industry (i.e are most likely to visit these websites). These groups tend to be the higher income groups without young children.
Growth Industries and Websites
Digg.com was the fastest growing News and Media website (among the top 100 in January) with visits up more than 5-fold year-on-year. In January, 23% of downstream visits from Digg.com went to websites in the Entertainment industry. In July 2006, the picture was different with 22% of visits from Digg.com going to websites in the News and Media industry.
Mainstream media organisations are realising the power of blogs and the BBC and Guardian blogs in particular figure among the most visited domains in the Hitwise Lifestyle – Blogs industry (based on website visits, not readership through blog readers). The BBC Blog Network was the top ranked blog from a mainstream media outlet in January 2007 and its market share of visits among all industries of websites has increased 151% in the past five months. Guardian Unlimited Blogs has also experienced strong growth, with its market share of visits up 109%.
Three of the top ten fastest growing News and Media websites among the top 100 in January 2007 were Weather websites. The term ‘weather’ was the second highest volume generic (nonbranded) search term typed into search engines by UK Internet users in 2006, supporting the popularity of online weather sources.
Competition 2.0
Hitwise analysis reveals through three case studies how Wikipedia and YouTube have become competitors with mainstream media for breaking news. Analysis of Hitwise Search IntelligenceTM data reveals that for the Saddam Hussein execution, the Zidane headbutt during the World Cup in 2006 and the Israel–Lebanon confl ict in the summer of 2006, consumers turned to nontraditional news sources, in particular Wikipedia and YouTube, for analysis and images.
With search engines accounting for 29% of upstream visits to websites in the News and Media industry, it is important to know which websites are receiving visits from searches for key events.
The Hitwise News & Media industry includes websites for major broadcasters and print media as well as online news websites and news aggregators. It includes some of the most visited websites on the Internet including BBC.co.uk and Google News as well as websites for print media outlets such as Telegraph and Guardian Unlimited.
In January 2007, the industry included 7,050 websites and accounted for 4.31% of all UK Internet visits. Hitwise classifies these websites into four sub-categories to allow for comparisons among specific types of News and Media websites, including Print Media, IT Media, Community Directories and Guides, and Weather. There were 207,999 unique search terms sending visits to the industry in the four weeks to 27th January 2007.
The News and Media Industry in Context
The News and Media industry accounted for 4.31% of all UK Internet visits, accounting for one in every 24 UK Internet visits in January 2007.
The BBC is by far the largest News and Media website, with www.bbc.co.uk accounting for 15.45% of industry visits. Four BBC domains (www.bbc.co.uk, news.bbc.co.uk, www.bbc.co.uk/ weather and www.bbc.co.uk/radio4) were among the 20 most visited News and Media websites in January.
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