Topix Blog: comScore: Topix 4th largest online newspaper

April 15, 2008

comScore: Topix 4th largest online newspaper

by amy at 11:30 AM

This month, comScore added a new category to its rankings within the News & Information category: newspapers. While we don’t have a print edition, comScore has categorized Topix in with other online newspapers (and our investors are the three largest newspaper companies in the country). From a media-buying and audience perspective, the comparisons are interesting.

In this new category, Topix ranks 7th, but a closer look reveals that three are roll-ups of parent companies (like Mama T). But when you compare Topix to stand-alone online brands – we shine in the Top 5:

March 2008
Unique Visitors
1. New York Times Brand	12,473,000
2. USA Today Sites	7,865,000
3. WashingtonPost.com	7,430,000
4. Topix	5,597,000
5. HuffingtonPost.com	4,167,000

Source: comScore, March 2008

Also, a quick comparison shows low duplication between Topix and these sites – suggesting that Topix is reaching an incremental audience than other national news brands. For example, the New York Times and USA Today overlap with each other by 2 million visitors, while Topix shares about 1 million visitors with the New York Times, and 700,000 with USA Today, respectively. And less than 7% of WashPost.com’s audience also visits Topix. This dovetails with research from Hitwise last year, which showed Topix over-indexing in non-metro markets.

In addition, last month, comScore pointed out that younger, non-newspaper print readers are very likely to visit Topix, observing,

“Non-newspaper readers are a particularly important segment to reach because they are heavier than average news consumers – they just prefer to consume it in a digital format.”

Combined, this data makes a strong case for Topix in the media mix.

In related media news, eMarketer talked with Topix CEO Chris Tolles about reaching local audiences online. And Tolles also spoke with Ad Age regarding the new influx of news aggregators in the market.

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