The average time spent on newspapers websites in April stood at 11 minutes 22 seconds (data from the top 30). No change from last year, when it stood at 11’33”.

2 lessons to be drawn from this:

1. Web-users look at many different brands online. In 2004 they spent an average of 7 minutes a day looking at news content. This means that even Nytimes.com, which tops the list, only represents 17% of its readers’ total online consumption.

The brands they are fragmenting, indeed.

2. Offline, US readers spend 17 minutes a day reading their paper. The figure jumps to 40 minutes for readers of UK national dailies. Spending so much time with a brand allows for creating deep bonds.

The identity-forming character of newspaper brands is one of their biggest advantages over other media. (ie, reading The Independent sets you apart, whereas watching BBC News doesn’t make you feel any special).

Online, users don’t spend much time reading news. Instead, they go for facebook, ebay and pogo.com (a gaming site). Socialization, classified-browsing and games. Think Sudoku, crosswords, classifieds and personals. Which of these do offline newspapers not offer?

If they want to transfer their brand equity online, newspapers will have to go beyond news-publishing and address social networks more aggressively.