News websites need to pull as much as 200 million page views or more per month, in order to be of utmost interest to advertisers, according to a new report.

"Based on our research, the conversation [with advertisers] gets interesting at 200 million page views plus a month, but much more so around 800 million," wrote ContentNext (via Silicon Alley Insider). For big operations like The New York Times, surviving as a web-only news product would require about 1.3 billion page views a month.

That's significantly more than the 173 million NYTimes.com saw in October (per comScore), MediaBuyerPlanner noted.

As news readership shifts to print, The New York Times has shifted significant resources toward developing its online brand. Over the past several months it ran a Facebook campaign intended to improve its fan figures, and it recently launched a series of unscripted YouTube shorts where celebrities divulge their favorite NYTimes.com features.

But if the online gamble is going to pay off, it's at pains to do so soon. Last week The New York Times set feelers out to mortgage its Manhattan headquarters.