Online subscribers now 45 percent of WSJ subscribers

Here are comments about the The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch.com during the News Corp. third-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday:

Chief executive officer Robert Thomson:

At Dow Jones this quarter, digital accounted for more than 50% of total revenues, and digital only subscribers at the Wall Street Journal grew to 893,000, representing nearly 45% of the base.

We are building a strong digital platform on top of the WSJ print circulation, which today is double the size of its nearest rival. And 51% of the Wall Street Journal digital audience now comes from mobile, up six percentage points from a year ago….

In this quarter, we also relaunched the MarketWatch website and we have seen 20% revenue growth, with quarterly traffic exceeding 20 million unique users and page views of over 150 million, up high teens versus the second quarter.

Chief financial officer Bedi Singh:

At Dow Jones, domestic advertising at the Wall Street Journal declined 4% versus the prior-year quarter, a slight improvement from last quarter. Declines in print advertising were again partially offset by continued solid growth in digital, driven by strength in programmatic and custom content. And digital accounted for approximately one third of Dow Jones’ ad revenues this quarter.

Wall Street Journal circulation revenues grew 5% this quarter due to higher subscription pricing and higher digital paid subscribers, as print volume remained relatively stable. Digital only paid subscribers were 893,000 for the quarter, a strong double digit gain over the prior year.

Read the entire transcript here.