Times and Sunday Times Paywall Content Has 362,000 Monthly Users

James Robinson | guardian.co.uk

Nielsen estimates traffic to News International sites' front pages has declined 43% and number viewing stories by 88%

News International's silence on subscriber numbers for Times and Sunday Times online content continues, three and a half months after the paywall went up. But today audience research company Nielsen has taken a stab at estimating the number of UK web users who are going beyond the papers' website front pages - and paywall - and accessing subscription content: an average of 362,000 per month between July and the end of September.

Nielsen also estimates that 1.78 million monthly unique UK visitors went to the thetimes.co.uk and sunday times.co.uk front pages on average over the period - suggesting that of those, just over 20% are going on to access subscription content.

In the three months up to the end of June, before the paywall went up, Times Online - offering content from both papers - averaged 3.1 million unique monthly visitors, according to Nielsen.

This suggests that traffic to the front pages has declined by nearly 43% and the number of going through to individual stories by just over 88% since the News International titles began charging £1 a day or £2 a week for access to content on both websites on 2 July.

It is also unclear how many of the 362,000 monthly visitors Nielsen identifies as climbing over the paywall are new subscribers.

The Nielsen figures include traffic generated by users who were given free online trials, or get free web access thrown in with their print subscription to the Times or Sunday Times. Nielsen has not calculated how many users took advantage of the free online trial offer.

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