Top 25 Local Sites by Audience Penetration

By: E&P Staff Thanks to their audience penetration, newspaper Web sites offer ideal opportunities for local spot advertising buys, according to The Media Audit audience survey conducted by International Demographics Inc. of Houston.

"Local media Web sites in the metropolitan markets often offer greater local penetration than any national Web site could offer in the same market," said International Demographics President Bob Jordan. His firm provided E&P with the most recent rankings of the top 25 local media Web sites by percentage of local adults logging on.

Washingtonpost.com was No. 1, with 40.1% of local adults saying they visited the site in the past month, and 28.7% in the last week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's AJC.com was No. 2, with 28.5% of local adults logging on in the past month.

Rounding out the top 10 were SignOnSanDiego.com (27.2% of adults in the past month), SacBee.com (25.9%), StarTribune.com (25.3%), 9News.com of Denver (24.3%), boston.com (23.6%), azcentral.com (23%), STLtoday.com (23%), and OregonLive.com (22.7%).

"Our numbers include only adults [18 years+] from the immediate metro market," Jordan said. "We do not gather data on Web site visitors who live outside the metro area. ... Local sites offer an assurance of reaching a very large local audience. In addition, if the national advertisers are also advertisers in the local paper or on the local television station these opportunities to increase their reach and frequency will be available at reasonable costs."

Not surprisingly, daily newspapers have the largest audience penetration in 22 of the 25 largest metro areas surveyed by The Media Audit, which conducts its research by telephone. A local TV network affiliate drew higher percentages of local adults only in Denver, Detroit and Dallas.

All markets were surveyed in 2003. The following sites ranked 11-25:

11. seattletimes (22.4% local adults logging on in past month)
12. houstonchronicle.com (21.2%)
13. denverpost.com (20.7%)
14. chicagotribune.com (20.6%)
15. Tampa Tribune's TBO.com (19.9%)
16. Baltimore's SunSpot.net (19.6%)
17. cleveland.com (19.4%)
18. philly.com (17.8%)
19. cincinnati.com (17.7%)
20. WDIV-TV's ClickOnDetroit.com (15.9%)
21. detroitnews.com (15.8%)
22. Pittsburgh's post-gazette.com (15.8%)
23. Miami's herald.com (14.3%)
24. nytimes.com (13.9%)
25. sfgate.com (13%)