Finally, after years of ignoring the revenue potential in its huge overseas audience, Mail Online has decided the best thing would be to monetise those readers. Some 75 percent (8.6 million) of the news site’s 11.6 million monthly users came from outside the UK in August, according to yesterday’s ABCe figures (higher than any other British online paper), but consecutive bosses have considered advertising to them “pointless”.

SEE ALSO: DailyMail.co.uk Reckons No Money In Impressive Overseas Reader GrowthDaily Mail Becomes UK’s No. 2 Newspaper Site After 162 Percent Annual User Growth

Today, however, editorial director Martin Clarke tells Media Week the outfit is “looking into effective ways of selling digital ad space tailored to an international audience”: “We have the means, but the issue is how can you sell that to buyers. Our readership is huge in America – figures put us as the sixth most visited news site in the US, but that readership isn’t concentrated in specific areas. But while we will concentrate on growing our UK readership for the moment, we would be foolish not to take advantage of our following overseas, and we are investigating ways of increasing our commercial revenue through these channels.”

- Previously: Only this month, Clarke rejected the idea (see post): “Its great to have international visitors ... but in economic terms you can’t [convert] it into revenue. It’s pointless everyone judging themselves by traffic that no one can quite work out how to monetise.” And: “All our efforts are focused on the UK traffic ... they are the people our advertisers, at the moment, are interested in. No British newspaper website - and we all have masses of traffic from abroad particularly the States - has really figured out how you effectively monetise it.” Clarke’s predecessor Avril Williams in 2004 reckoned the 11 percent overseas traffic DailyMail.co.uk attracted then was “too much” and she “would far rather they had a hundred per cent UK audience”, complaining about bandwidth cost (according to City University’s study).

- Competition: Why the sudden change of tune? Competition? Guardian Unlimited will imminently launch GuardianAmerica.com, a grab for the hearts and dollars of US readers and advertisers, while BBC Worldwide, the FT and The Times are all making plays Stateside. The Mail has, until now, been courting advertisers for only a quarter of its audience - it would, indeed, appear foolish not to prosper from all those eyeballs the paper is getting via Matt Drudge, especially during an ad boom. Parent Associated Northcliffe Digital this summer joined Tomorrow Focus, selling its inventory in to the pan-European ad network. It will now need to do similar for other territories.