Online users' content, commerce habits change throughout the day By Rusty Coats Director of New Media MORI Research Article posted January 2003 It's clear that daytime is emerging as primetime online, with news sites leading the pack. News trails only e-mail as the most powerful content for reaching online users during the day, according to [15]MORI Research's [16]2002 Online Consumer Study conducted on behalf of the NAA. Advertisers who want to reach online users during the day need to buy ads on news sites to reach the biggest audience. And because TV is incapable of reaching at-work users, the Web is emerging as daytime's most effective advertising medium. Web site traffic to news sites begins to slip in the late afternoon and plummets at night. Despite the fact that most at-work Internet users also are at-home users, according to a 2001 Media Consumption Study by the [17]Online Publishers Association, at-home users do not flock to news sites. Web site traffic to news sites begins to slip in the late afternoon and plummets at night, leaving newspaper sites largely de-populated. This is particularly troublesome when looking at data from more than 50,000 online users MORI has studied in 2002. In telephone and online-intercept surveys, online users consistently report that their most active Internet use occurs after 5 p.m. exactly when online news traffic logs show the least amount of activity. Could it be that online audiences have different appetites at different times of day? Does interest in news decline during the course of the day? Do some topics become more interesting in the evening? With online connectivity rapidly approaching a state of plateau 67 percent of all U.S. adults are online growth in frequency and in new dayparts will play the biggest role in future online growth in general and especially for online news sites. A Shift in Priorities Building on findings from the 2002 Online Consumer, MORI Research fielded an online daypart study in October and November of more than 12,000 online users from nine newspaper sites in eight distinct geographic zones. The study probed whether content and advertising interests are influenced by time of day. The priorities of our users are not constant across a 24-hour period. The results are astonishing. Without a doubt, the priorities of our users are not constant across a 24-hour period. Their priorities - what they want to do online, how often they do it and, at its core, why they use us - change based on the time of day. The findings reveal provocative new directions for the online-newspaper industry. * By morning, our users are almost as interested in news breaking, local, national, business and sports as they are in e-mail. * By afternoon, with the importance of news waning, entertainment-category features such as movie times, maps and directions, and offbeat news are on the rise. * In the evening, our ability to connect users with jobs, cars and homes becomes central, along with our ability to facilitate their online-shopping needs from researching products to actually purchasing products. This research provides insights that could be our first steps toward becoming as powerful a medium for nighttime, at-home users as we currently are for daytime, at-work users. Many participating companies already have begun to redesign their Web sites based on these findings. While we believe further testing is needed, the toplines below provide a primer on the 2002 Online Dayparts Study. Further results will be presented at the [18]CONNECTIONS conference in Orlando and published for NAA members to review. Content * Content interest shifts across different dayparts among online newspaper users. Simply put, different content appeals at different times of day. * Weather is most powerful in the morning and midday as is business news and business-related research. News remains the most frequently used content, with breaking news first, local news second and national news third. Morning and early-afternoon interests are dominated by news interest and use. But news-category use plummets in the afternoon and evening; by night, news is roughly half its morning strength. * Entertainment content enjoys a surge in interest in the late afternoon. Local calendars, movie times, online games and offbeat news surge in the 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. daypart. Interest in entertainment-related content particularly swells among young users in the afternoon and diminishes only slightly at night. * Use of sports content is solid across all dayparts. Though interest in sports content is a niche, it is a large niche and its sports readers are consistently interested in the topic across all dayparts. * Weather is most powerful in the morning and midday as is business news and business-related research. Weather falls off somewhat, but interest in business-related content falls dramatically in the late afternoon and vanishes by nightfall. * Interactive features such as chatting on message boards, downloading music and playing online games are powerful at night and are even more powerful with younger users under age 24. * Research for a personal interest or hobby remains constant and, because other categories have fallen in resonance, becomes a dominant player in the evening hours. This area of interest is broad and niche-centric, but several topics show large-scale promise: Travel, shopping and entertainment. Advertising * By day, newspaper Web sites own the local marketplace. The Internet in general and newspaper Web sites in particular are the strongest media vehicles to reach people by day about five times more effective in the 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. timeslot than TV. Only radio competes as a medium used during the daytime, but is half as strong as the Internet and significantly weaker than online newspaper sites. Simply: By day, newspaper Web sites own the local marketplace. * Printed newspapers are strongest in the pre-8 a.m. timeslot, but not as strong as radio, the leader in that slot. * At night, the Internet is the only medium to rival TV in the primetime slot, where television is at its peak. Eight in 10 users watch TV during that slot; five in 10 use the Internet, two in 10 listen to the radio and one in 10 read the newspaper. * Online newspaper users say printed newspapers are their primary source of local advertising, with TV and radio jockeying for second place. But 25 percent say the online newspaper is their primary source, and in some markets outpaced TV and radio. This supports claims that, when combined, the newspaper and Web site are unbeatable as a combination advertising buy. * Newspapers and TV lead as the media that most influence users' purchasing decisions. But the Internet is a close second, with radio trailing. In many markets, the Internet was just as effective as TV and newspapers in influencing purchases. * Again, this argues for the strength of a combined-media buy, which would outpace all other media in reach and effectiveness. Regarding dayparts, it also argues for charging primetime advertising rates on Internet news sites during morning and early-afternoon dayparts when TV is weakest and radio, while reaching people, is not seen as an effective advertising medium, since it does not influence purchases. * Online newspaper users say printed newspapers are their primary source of local advertising. The most powerful vehicles for night audiences are not content-related but commerce-related. When asked what time of day users shop online for a variety of items, from airline tickets to vehicles, the 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. timeslot was by far the strongest choice in every category airline tickets, books, clothing, electronic and computer equipment, vehicles and entertainment-related goods and services. Simply: Nighttime is primetime for online shopping. * Shopping for business purchases is the exception. The top daypart for business-related shopping is 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. which positions online newspapers nicely as an advertising vehicle for the business decision maker. (MORI confirmed this in a previous study for [19]washingtonpost.com, which found that business decision-makers turn to the Web more than any other medium for advertising to help them make business-related purchases. Details at: [20]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/mediakit/mediacenter/p r/2 002/release_BDM_Study.html) * Further, classified-ad categories are reported strongest in the evening hours. The most popular time users say they go online to look for information about homes for sale, vehicles for sale, participate in online auctions or shop for personal-related goods and services is 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The only commerce category to win in the daytime hours was shopping for business-related purchases. It should be emphasized that this survey polled users of online newspapers and by design could not reach users who do not visit our sites. By interviewing a national telephone sample of online users for the NAA in the 2002 Online Consumer Study, we found that half of all online users had never gone online for local news and four in 10 had never gone online for national news. That alone is a clue for expanding online franchises into non-news categories particularly at night. If news as a category doesn't inspire them, marketing ourselves solely as "news Web sites" will not attract them, either. But it may be that the answer to growing nighttime audience is the franchise online newspapers were built to protect: Our ability to connect buyers and sellers. CAPTION: Digital Links MORI Research [21]http://www.moriresearch.com Online Publishers Association [22]http://www.online-publishers.org Just an email away...... Justin VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List. 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