German media attract international visitors

Advertisers may be a bigger bump from consumers that they originally thought by advertising with traditional German media websites. comScore researchers found that more than 30% of the visitors to these websites were international.

by Kristina Knight

The highest number of international readers to German media websites landed on RTL Group Websites (63% of traffic), meanwhile Spiegel.de websites obtained 32% of their website traffic from international visitors. ProseibenSat1 websites and ARD.de each obtained 30% of their traffic from an international audience.

With more than one-quarter of the total website traffic coming from outside Germany, these websites are becoming a good investment for businesses and marketers around the globe.

“The Internet is a truly global medium, allowing consumers to easily access content from anywhere in the world,” said Bob Ivins, EVP of European Markets for comScore. “News is a category with large, global brands. It is critical for key national news sources to build their international traffic in order to assure their fair share of consumers of news interested in their country."

In addition to drawing in more visitors from around the world, the websites are drawing more visitors in general. ProSiebenSat1 website properties showed 39% growth year over year (December 2006 to December 2007) while RTL Group westies showed 6% growth and Axel Springer websites increased traffic by 34%. The biggest year over year change came from Hubert Burda Media, which showed a 145% increase year over year.