Media Choice;The Sun Online

The Sun's Website ADVERTISEMENT

So, the word is that the super soar-away Sun is now the web's largest newspaper, based on its 108 million-impression figure (ABCe).

Personally, I would judge a site's size on its reach, rather than the overall number of impacts that it achieves each month, but all credit to The-sun.co.uk for doing the audit when many of its competitors haven't.

There is not, however, room here to debate the pros and cons of the different metrics, or the relevance of ABCe audits.

For now, let's just evaluate what The Sun's editorial team offers internet users and whether it is a useful advertising proposition.

Unsurprisingly, most of the paper version's tried and tested themes are there: celebrity tittle-tattle, page 3 dollies, plenty of sport, and a little bit of news.

There is some extra stuff, too, like the top 10 virals, which sadly don't match the quality of those found on sites like Lycos, and a car locator service which pops up unrequested (hmm, thanks).

However, none of this stops me, or the other 2,869,317 users from going to the site each month, which is the first acid test of whether it's any good or not.

I have not seen much
coverage of the URL in the paper version, so people must be going to the site for its editorial, rather than just as a result of short-term promotion. And only 46% of
the newspaper's readership goes to the website, in any case.

The second acid test is whether it is worth spending our clients' money with it.  Again, things are pretty positive.

Past experience of working with it has been good. 

And, despite audience profile differences with the paper version, I suppose we could regard the fact that The-sun.co.uk is the "biggest" online newspaper as a kind of sign, if you like looking for these sort of things, that the internet is now fully democratised and accessed by the man in the street.

The issue is now no longer who has and who has not got regular access to the internet.

It is now more about who has high-speed access; but that is an altogether different story.