Global news intrigues online users

Consumers don't log on to newspaper and content sites simply to catch up on their neighborhood news. According to a recent Nielsen//Netratings AdRelevance report, global news and events are a big draw for many consumers.

by Kristina Knight

Both men (50.1%) and women (49.8%) are logging on to the Internet for global news.

Favorite destinations include Yahoo! News (13% reach) and CNN (11% reach). MSNBC (10% reach), AOL (8.6% reach) and NYTimes.com (5% reach) rounded out the top five destination points for news.

Why should online marketers care what consumers are reading online? Because by knowing what users are reading now, marketers can better determine which types of news stories or online news clips will be viewed in the future, thereby increasing the chances of a higher campaign ROI.

Let's take a closer look at the demographics logging on for news. About 20% of the news gathering population have household incomes of up to $49,999 dollars and 25% of news readers have household incomes of $50,000 to $75,000. A little more than 15% of news readers' incomes are over $100,000.

These higher income brackets indicate that news readers may have a larger than average amount of expendable income available to them. So targeting news readers could be even more important to online campaigns. By providing these readers with useful product information or a catchy online ad, marketers have made the first step into changing the user from a reader to a buyer.