It’s always good when things are timely. Here on Mount Street we spend a great deal of our PR expertise trying to look into a crystal ball- whether it’s predicting the next social media trend or public response to a daring campaign- so when new evidence in support of a theory we recently mused on turns up there’s little chance it won’t get noticed.
Again those good people at online monitor Experian Hitwise have been hard at work, with the UK’s web-based activity for June the focus of their efforts. And there are some expected success stories, with social networking seeing a sizeable increase (up 3.4% on the month with 10.6 % on the year), and online video consumption growing by even more (the 3.2% month-on-month gain is dwarfed by a staggering 29.8% growth since 2010).
But News & Media sites saw hits drop by almost 5% since last year, something that was touched upon here just a few posts ago, adding more fuel to the ‘internet news consumption is beginning to wane’ fire. However, there’s an interesting fact to take in here, namely that visits to the online homes of Print has actually seen one of the largest increases- up 12.5% compared with 2010. Whether this means readers are beginning to remember why they bought a newspaper or magazine in the first place (i.e. trained staff working under the shadow of legal retribution) remains to be seen, but whatever the cause there’s obviously consistent interest in the titles with both physical and electronic pages. It’s just a shame those in charge still can’t figure out a decent way of making the latter (and more widely read) type of publication pay.
