The advertising industry is built on consumers’ dreams, and few things make us as starry-eyed as property.

Perhaps with this in mind, the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper with an affluent global readership, has announced the launch of “Mansion,” a weekly, stand-alone section focusing on luxury residential real estate worldwide, on October 5.

“We know our audience is already well-versed and interested in the high-end real estate market, and Mansion provides advertisers the opportunity to speak directly to that audience,” said Michael Rooney, the Journal’s Chief Revenue Officer, in the press release.

Advertisers who have already signed on to speak directly to that audience include Sotheby’s International Realty, Sub-Zero and Wolf, Coldwell Banker and Prudential Douglas.

Mansion will appear every Friday in the Journal’s U.S. print edition, with certain content also being printed in its Europe and Asia editions. It will also be available online and via the iPad/iPhone app.

Its regular features will include inside looks at prominent peoples’ homes and real estate portfolios, high-end financing advice, and guides to global real estate markets.

British newspapers experienced a sporting spike in digital traffic during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

To take an example, the Guardian saw a 23 percent increase in average daily unique browsers, a 21 percent rise in average daily visits, and a 15 percent jump in average daily page views during the Olympics, as compared with figures from 17 days before the Opening Ceremonies. Not including mobile traffic, the site attracted a total of 39.9 million page views – 2.3 million per day, on average – between July 27 and August 12 for Olympic content alone.

These numbers tell a heartening story: the readers are out there.

As print circulation continues its long luge ride – the Guardian’s dropped by another 15.85 percent between July 2011 and July 2012 to 209,354, a rate of decline outpaced only by the Independent, which dropped by 54.28 percent to reach below 83,619 – such news is particularly welcome.