Daily Mail is now an Online Beast in the middle market

The Daily Mail, which for years gave only token resources to its website, has seen massive online readership growth this year since it started taking the internet seriously.

Web traffic on DailyMail.co.uk has grown from 1.3 million unique users in January to the current 6.6 million, according to Associated New Media sources, quoting data from Hitwise.

This means that if you pitch a story to the Daily mail, you may want to be sure you are also pitching it to the online version as well.

It also means that in media evaluation, clips from the Mail have an on-line counterpart - a further redership of 1.3 million.

This conversion to the Internet comes not a moment to soon.The Guardian reports:

Daily Mail & General Trust today reported declines in advertising revenues at its national and regional divisions.

At national group Associated Newspapers, home to the Daily Mail and London Evening Standard, ad revenues were down 6% excluding the effect of acquisitions in the 11 months to the end of August.

Including acquisitions, advertising was down just 2%, a performance DMGT described as "robust", while circulation revenues were up 1.6%.

Classified advertising was down 9%, with display advertising suffering less at 5% down and the market showing some signs of improvement.

The guardian, of course makes profits from its online properties.