Online News Consumption Grows By 37% In India: Comscore Study
A recent Comscore study has found that the traffic to online news sites reached a record 15.8 million which is an increase of over 37% from last year and it also represents almost 44% of the total online population of India.
News has been a controversial segment in the online space with Newspapers the world over pointing fingers at Google for taking away their revenues.
If you see the top 10 online news destinations according to this study you world find that Yahoo news tops the unique visitors statistics followed by surprise surprise New York Times Digital and then by the Times of India, Hindu, Oneindia and other news papers.
| Top 10 News/Information Sites in India Based on Unique Visitors October 2009 vs. October 2008 Total India Internet Audience*, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore World Metrix |
|||
| Total Unique Visitors (000) | |||
| Oct-2008 | Oct-2009 | % Change | |
| Total Internet : Total Audience | 31,179 | 36,170 | 16 |
| News/Information | 11,529 | 15,838 | 37 |
| Yahoo! News | 3,312 | 4,169 | 26 |
| New York Times Digital | 2,306 | 3,854 | 67 |
| The Times of India** | 1,476 | 2,626 | 78 |
| Oneindia.in | 949 | 2,359 | 148 |
| The Hindu Group | 1,299 | 1,551 | 19 |
| The Indian Express Group | 925 | 1,244 | 35 |
| HT Media Ltd | 1,088 | 1,155 | 6 |
| NDTV.com | 848 | 1,104 | 30 |
| BBC | 777 | 992 | 28 |
| The Economic Times** | 769 | 820 | 7 |
*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.
**The Times of India and Economic Times are both channels included in the Times Internet Ltd property.
No Rediff News?
The surprise element in these statistics is the fact that there was no rediff news in the top 10 sites listed by unique visitors. I think there is surely some problem here as Rediff would deserve a place in the top ten news sites in India.
Time Spent Also Critical
One other statistic that was critical was the time spent. Indians spent 22 minutes on news sites and consumed 38 pages of content which is surely a lot more than what would be average page views on other sites.
HTMedia Statistics Flawed?
Visitors to HT Media Ltd includes Shine.com and Hindustantimes.com so while the inclusion of Hindutantimes would make sense we don’t quite agree with the inclusion of Shine which is at best a jobsite and not a news site.
Our Take
All in all comscore data needs to be looked at with a pinch of salt as it doesn’t include cyber cafe traction. But one thing is for sure this increased usage are signs for traditional newspapers that their fate could be headed in a similar direction just like their western counterparts. The good part though is that most of them have a good online presence. One another thing the report lacks is the data on how many Indians actually visit Google news channels. I mean Google news subscriptions could define how people consume news in the future. Also another interesting statistic might be that of news consumption via blogs.
“The number of online news and information consumers in India surged 37 percent in the past year, more than double the rate of growth of the total online audience in India,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. “As the world’s seventh largest Internet market and one of the fastest growing, India represents fertile ground for both local and multinational publishers hoping to expand their audience footprint.”
Online News Category Sees Record Number of Visitors in October
In October 2009, nearly 16 million people visited an online news site in India, a gain of 37 percent from the previous year. A look at the most visited news destinations in India revealed that local brands make up a significant portion of the top news sites – and some of the fastest growing. The Times of India captured the #3 spot in terms of visitation reaching 2.6 million visitors during the month (up 78 percent), while Oneindia.in surged 148 percent to 2.4 million visitors. The Hindu Group, the fifth most visited news property in India, reached nearly 1.6 million visitors in October (up 19 percent).
Multi-national brands Yahoo! and New York Times ranked as the most visited destinations in the news category – also with high growth rates. Yahoo! News led all news sites with 4.2 million visitors, up 26 percent versus year ago, followed by New York Times Digital with nearly 3.9 million visitors, an increase of 67 percent.
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Bhaisaab – this time you hit it correct.Not having Rediff news numbers is debatable.Any understanding why?
Hi, not sure if we can stretch and impugn the fate of ‘newspapers’. Its imperative to understand the ‘content consumption’ that happened over these news websites. Is it because a lot of them changed their product offering and offered a lot more ‘video’ content? Did some of them finally implement web 2.0? answers to these question might lead one to believe that online news consumption is not a competition but a complement to the overall news consumption through the newspapers.
Moreover how has the time spent moved? What were the key topics being searched on those news sites? Year 2009 was especially ‘news heavy’ given many events which have re-coursed the world direction – obama, MJ, chinese quake, now copenhagen etc. My sense is that the online news portals are actually complementing by offering ‘audio / video’ feed to traditional newspapers.
I still havent given up the habit of having my breakfast with the newspaper. Unlikely i will give it up in a long time