As last year we have combined these metrics of frequency and interest to give us a non-overlapping categorisation of the online news universe that we can apply across all of our countries.

• News Lovers: These are people who access the news several times a day and say they are extremely interested in the news.
• Daily Briefers: These are people who also access the news several times a day but they say they are a bit less interested (very or somewhat) in the news.
• Casual Users: These are people who consume less frequently – anything between once a day to once a month – and they also tend to be less interested in the news, with a majority only somewhat interested in news.

Types of news users drawn from interest and frequency

We’ll refer back to these groupings throughout this study, but as we shall see, some of these groups play more important roles than others in driving the new interactive news ecosystem. News Lovers consume more, share more, and are twice as likely to pay for online news. The majority of consumers across countries (55%) can be considered Daily Briefers. They tend to be reluctant to pay for online news but the size of this group makes them important for advertisers trying to reach a mass audience. The US has the highest proportion of Casual Users (32%), but also a high proportion of News Lovers (26%). Italy has the highest proportion of News Lovers (29%) while Japan and Finland (67% and 69%) have the highest proportion of Daily Briefers.