A regional editor-in-chief has described the digital revolution as “our industry’s saviour” after the latest ABC figures recorded rises in web audiences for the titles he oversees.
Darren Thwaites, editor of Newcastle daily The Chronicle, says the time has come to realise newspapers’ “biggest threat” is also their greatest opportunity after the statistics revealed a year-on-year growth rate of 173pc for the ChronicleLive website.
In an editorial, he said that reading newspapers remained “an enjoyable ritual” for many people and predicted there was still room for print in the digital age.
But Darren, who also serves as Trinity Mirror’s North East editor-in-chief, also sought to argue that the scale of digital audience growth now being seen will lead to corresponding growth in advertising revenues.
He wrote: “After years of uncertainty, an industry built on audience is showing audience growth. Quite simply, we’re providing readers with what they want, when they want it and on the platform of their choosing.
“We’re using real-time analysis to make sure we deliver the right content at the right time. We cover events as they happen, breaking news instantly.
“We publish more stories on subjects that engage the most interest and we plan ahead to much greater effect.
“We’ve brought new people into our business to ensure we have leading-edge knowledge around social media and search engine optimisation.”
He added: “Our online content is free to access so our model is driven by offering advertisers access to audiences. But that’s always been the case, with most revenues in regional media traditionally based on advertising.
“And there’s plenty of cake to get at. Online advertising spend easily eclipses TV and print. Clever digital advertising delivers results.
“Newspapers are brilliant for raising local brand awareness, while online advertising can take you right to point of purchase in a single click.
“It’s no surprise then that we’re seeing growth in digital advertising revenues as our audience and expertise develops. We’re helping readers find content and we’re helping advertisers reach customers.”
Darren conceded that the days of breaking news in print had gone but insisted there was still room for physical newspapers.
“Good newspapers continue to bring the best of everything together in one place. They’ll never deliver live breaking news as well as web and mobile platforms. But they remain an enjoyable ritual for many.
“Those who question why anyone would buy a newspaper when they can read stories for free online might ask the same of Starbucks.Why would anyone pay £2 for a coffee when you could just stick the kettle on?
“It’s a ritual, an enjoyable experience, a relaxing diversion. Just like a newspaper (only more expensive!)”
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Blimey – so everything’s all right then.
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The train left a long time ago. The station has since been closed, but thanks for turning up.
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Oh. So you can put the kettle on and magic up a cup of coffee when you are walking down the High Street, can you?
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Trinity mirror big wig in toeing the party line shocked. Reminds me of the time Sly Bailey said she didn’t like men in ties and my boss and his boss came in with open collars. Good times. (Both have since been laid off.)
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Well a least a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, but surely when this spike levels out it’s back to making this new team of optimisers redundant in due course.
The rot has already set in with UGC and using student Journos that cost peanuts running the operation with young news editors that also don’t cost much money.
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Anyone who’s been in Trinity Mirror for the past few years will know that ‘good newspapers’ are not what the company does any longer.
No production to speak of, and no subbing to correct the constant stream of errors put online.
And there’s a backlash already over clickbait. All headlines seem to start with ‘You won’t believe what happened next’ or similar.
I’d really like to know what percentage of this rise is down to galleries or pointless videos, and how much is down to actual news.
And, more importantly, how much money it actually makes.
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On a serious level we note the “173pc year-on-year growth rate” (whatever that is) for the website but then the “sought to argue” about a corresponding increase in revenues. The first part of the above sentence is presumably hard fact; the second part demonstrably not, rather mere vapouring. Also NB “engage”; “real-time analysis” (huh?); “leading-edge” (I thought it was “cutting edge”) – all phraseology from the Lexicon of Drivel these people use to substitute for thinking.
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More digi-babble. No mention of how much cash is being ploughed in to achieve ‘growth in digital advertising revenues.’ Zzzzzzzzzzz.
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“Online advertising spend easily eclipses TV and print.”
There you have it! He said it.
Any hard cash figures to back that up?
Seems good news to all those desperate souls working on run-down newspapers and stuffing websites at the same time.
Perhaps too good to be true?
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Here’s a link to the full article http://www.thejournal.co.uk/opinion/darren-thwaites-digital-revolution-good-8756104
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Oh dear. The plain fact is that on line doesn’t make much money. The reason? Just ask yourself the same question that any sensible would-be advertiser asks: “How many times have you visited a news website and then linked to an advert?”
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I look at my local weekly’s website and see NO local adverts. It’s all PPI recovery and wonga/M&S/B&Q etc. the small local businessman wants print advertising and is simply refusing to go digital. This will eventually save print and show digital up for the useless waste of time it is.
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This is a useful article regarding the size and growth of the overall digital advertising market http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/01/gadget-obsessed-uk-top-digital-advertising-spend
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That line ‘reading newspapers remains an enjoyable ritual’ is really annoying, the idea that it’s somehow a quaint or antiquated way of finding out what’s going on in your community.
Breaking news, people still physically read stuff – they read books, they read magazines, they do it all the time, the reason they don’t read papers is because they’ve been stripped of absolutely everything that made them worth reading, from local knowledge to photos that didn’t look like they were taken by a drunken maniac.
When my company restructures they gave us the same spiel, the ‘newsroom of the future’ they called it, which basically consisted of replacing sub editors with three flatscreen TVs on the wall with Sky Sports News on, one of which promptly broke.
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If I were a Chronicle reporter, I’d be reading those comments with an eye on Belfast and Berkshire and starting to wonder if a P45DEW is coming my way.
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Another one talking a good game.
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Come on you digiheads! People keep saying it: Show us the cash figures for digital. Then show us the cash for LOCAL (not national) advertising. We will be very interested. Do you really think advertisers will pay to go on weekly paper website where main dish of the day is likely to be a charity fund raiser or minor car crash.
The brave new digital future is several weeklies combining on one mini regional web site to try to achieve higher quality stories. Local webs are dead in the water.
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I asked an ad rep for a breakdown of the figures for a client looking to advertise. As in could they tell me the unique users from NE cities. “We can’t do that” came the reply. Yes you can I replied – it is very simple – “Well we can’t – we’ve been told we can’t”.
TM and all other regional press need to be transparent with figures to local companies. it’s no good a local carpet company promoting itself to some wandering traffic from Hong Kong or an ex pat geordie in Brisbane.
Also there needs to be an end to putting splicing print ad revenues and dropping part of it into the digital column. Soaring visitor figs are great and should be welcomed but a quick review of any regional website and it does not take a genius to get a clear picture of how much revenue is coming in. TM JP Newsquest et al and still making the bulk of revenue from every cover price and display ads – an ever decreasing circle – I hope I am wrong and they manage to get things to meet in the middle
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This is the line that worries me, although Mr Thwaites is not alone in this, as Johnston Press recently said much the same….”we publish more stories on subjects that engage the most interest”….which is why you see so much Daily Mail-lite drivel on local paper websites these days, and less and less informed and/or in-depth journalism any more.
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As a TM employee, I’d say the team deserves some recognition for these figures.
Reporters of all ages work their socks off and will no doubt be chuffed to read something optimistic about the industry. It isn’t often you hear the word ‘growth’ in local/regional news so how about some positive comments. We’re trying to do something.
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Unnamed it’s great the figures are going up but TM JP etc remain tightlipped on digi revenues and refuse to give clear figures to give local advertisers a steer.
Other than Hays Travel and a small ad for a kitchen company I see little on today’s website that will pay wages, lights, leccy etc on a rolling basis. If printed products went tomorrow the operation would have to close down.
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In the interests of fairness there is also the Beecham Peacock ads and rolling google and AOL which earn peanuts
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Totally agree Darren with the Guardian article from December but sadly most of that digi revenue appears to be bypassing the regional media websites in sufficient amounts to sustain even a skeleton operation – i sincerely hope I am wrong
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Here’s a positive comment – I’m positive we’ll soon be hearing how positive the results are for TM’s print-free experiment down south.
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Unnamed
I don’t think any negative comments reflect on journalists still working in the industry, they’re fighting the good fight still under incredible pressure. It’s the management spiel most people can’t abide.
As Kenny G says, it’s mostly smoke and mirrors, most of it is absolute nonsense. Many weeklies’ websites are now being incorporated into TM dailies as single pages so that advertising reps can ‘bump up’ their unique users claims when they visit advertisers.
There was a right and a wrong way that TM and the rest of the industry could have gone digital, shining sh*t and calling it gold wasn’t the right way.
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I find those pop-up ads and the video ones that burst into life (without your prior approval) irksome when I’m trying to read my 94th charity fund-raising nib.
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The article Darren recommended contains one very interesting line from the marketing guru they quote (Adam Smith, futures director at Group M): “Smith said that the best-case scenario is that newspaper brands are able to make up about 20% of the lost print advertising money from growing digital revenues.”
Good luck with finding that missing 80+%, Mr Thwaites.
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I’m not so interested in the % of overall revenue figures (tho’ of course important).
Would be far more revealing if a publisher had the guts to lift their skirt a little and show how their digital revenue figures are broken down. My suspicion is that these figures reveal the fragility of their digital strategy – I suspect numbers are included in these figures that are not strictly digital…(cross-platform campaigns, classified revenues that are really print not digital)
What’s the guess at the breakdown between:
Display advertising (Local)
Display Advertising (National + Remnant)
Display Advertising (Programmatic)
Recirculation (i.e. Outbrain)
Sponsored Content
Digital Subscriptions
Digital Classified
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HOW totally ‘on message’ for Trinity-Mirror, Darren.
In other words…
Give away content free for digi advertising revenue that wouldn’t pay the wages of the office cat.
Has ad revenue gone up proportionately to size of audience? Er, no.
Someone mentioned digital accounts for 6% of revenue – and I believe that’s creative accounting tied in with with print packages.
Industry’s saviour? Coffin, more like.
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Trinity Mirror 2014 print revenue: £521m. Digital revenue: £32m.
And I’m sure that digi revenue is bolstered by something like this: customer’s print ad costs £200 and they get an online ad of some kind discounted for £50, how often is that figure then getting changed by reps to £150 into print col and £100 into digi col?
More on the figures here: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/02/trinity-mirror-profits-rise-2014-simon-fox?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Fudgy, the process you’re suggesting is exactly what used to happen five years ago. Digital sales were a discounted extra on top of a print option.
However, that is exactly what is slowly reversing. The only issue with it is that national advertisers are only looking to spend on digital, which means three things: one, they don’t spend as much on digital overall to achieve a much greater reach; two, print is no longer an attractive option to national advertisers; three, local advertisers don’t get a look in on local websites and are also using platforms such as Facebook to target their own audiences more effectively and, more importantly, cheaply!
So, you might get Vodafone, Ryanair or Tesco to spend £20k across a handful of regional websites, but you need 100 local businesses spending £200 each to achieve the same figures. The only problem is, one ad rep can sell the Tesco ad but you’ll need a lot of salaries to sell to the local firms and that makes it not worth the effort.
It doesn’t matter what the percentages of print revenue to digital are. It’s the direction they are heading which is important for the longevity of the business.
As print sales decline, so will print ad revenue. As digital users increase, so will national advertising on them. So publishers are left with little option but to cut staff and rely on ‘head office’ to subsidise them.
Yes, this all affects the quality of the news but you can only do what you can with the resource at your disposal. Investment in this area is simply not an option.
It’s hard to argue about how quality matters when bloggers, vloggers and social media ‘personalities’ are gaining more readership than the local rag.
This isn’t about where the quality is or, for that matter, where the money is now. It’s about where the money is going to be in another five years’ time.
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Most of the people on here seem to be itching for digital to fail. I guess you assume that people will then flock back to papers, with readers put back in their box and expected to just read the news you serve up to them.
Bad news for you guys – it’s not going to happen. Looking at the comments above, I would guess two, maybe three, are from people who actually still work in a newsroom and who are interested in having a future in journalism. The rest, if they are from journalists, show how easy it is for the ill-informed to have an opinion.
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No Damned, it is not going to happen.
But where will the money come from to pay the wages for digital only reporters?
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While still at junior school I was taught the dangers of judging people and their opinions by who and what they are, so I haven’t judged and thus done a head count here, but I am curious about how many managers or their stooges Mr (or Ms) Damned might guess there to be on here. Not that it matters of course, it’s only his/her opinion after all.
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Damned – I don’t think anyone on here wants digital to fail. I think everyone is pretty much agreed that digital is the future but he rush for digital strategy is flawed based on the figures. The process should have been a weaning one instead of rush, push, slash, leap.
Big opportunity for anyone who can connect local advertisers with local readers/people/residents as the digital titles will all feature national brand ads in the future as set out by someone above.
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Bad news for Damned and his ill-informed assumption that people are itching for digital to fail so there’s a resurgence of print. Wrong.
The genie’s out of the bottle and I think everyone realises there is no going back.
People are bemoaning the reality of the situation. Falling print revenue means that there will be fewer and fewer jobs for people interested in having a future in journalism.
At a rough guess, newspapers have halved the number of journos they employ than they did 10 years ago.
I expect they will halve again over the next 10 years (probably less).
Perhaps Damned would like to explain how this is a good thing?
As for people having an ill-informed opinion, I’d keep quite about that if I were him…
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Damned is proceeding under the false assumption that the issue is between print and digital, it’s not, it’s between news and ‘content’. I’d be the first to applaud a newspaper website if it wasn’t full of pictures of people’s pets.
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Job losses are never good news but they can’t be blamed on digital strategies. They should be blamed on declining print revenues. Ignoring digital or going more slowly, as some of you seem to advocate, would be more damaging in the long run because that’s where readers are getting their news from. The choice is to provide it for them where they want it, or to insist that they buy the paper if they want our news. The second option will only lead to even more job losses, and also ensure we have no future.
There are plenty of digital journalism companies proving they can pay journalists from digital revenue. If you do the sums for the digital revenue of some regional publishers, you can see the same is true there too.
It’s a situation no-one likes, but criticising companies for trying to build a digital audience after years of sticking fingers in ears is all a bit short-sighted.
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It’s not that journalists want digital to fail because it demonstrably has not – I get most of my national/international news these days from BBC Online and it’s excellent. However, the high standards in evidence there are nowhere apparent on local news sites, which are plagued by inaccuracy (no proper subs I guess), barely altered press releases, and intrusive, often unpleasant advertising. Executives at the big companies seem to think you can provide a gold-star service with tin-pot investment – minimal and inexperienced staff, poor systems, minimal design expertise and so on. You cannot! Show me one local site – just one – that’s as good as The Guardian online, for example, and I’ll change my tune.
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Dick – but surely these sites are doing something right to attract so many people every day?
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There’s little or no interest in regional newspaper websites from a commercial viewpoint as they simply don’t have enough audience to appeal to national account buyers and the local community businessss which were once a staple of their local papers have since gone from print and with no interest in advertising on line.
majority of these local businesses own customers don’t use their local papers sites so any ad on there is wasted with no click through traffic,a business owner is only intetested in customers coming into the shop to make a purchase, not how many people look in the window without buying, that’s what’s happening online,
Here we have xcitable digi managers puffing out page visitor numbers as a sign of success yet shuffling away from the hard facts of how much click through and actual sales as a result of advertising on line.
I reality the only digital revenue local papers are seeing is due to the sales managers pushing sales staff to sell it by penalising bonus if it’s not achieved so the rep simply moves print revenue onto on line thus robbing peter to pay Paul with no tangible results for the customer who then stops advertising,often not going back to their original print ad thus further affecting overall ad revenues.
Until regional sites have enough traffic and quality interesting news content to sustain high levels of page visitors this will never be a viable commercial option for local businesses.
Publishers saw digital as an almost cost free revenue stream that advertisers would find extra budget to be part of
Fact is the sites are so poor that those visitors who do use them go for free news pieces and not to shop.
Despite being the saviours of regional press revenues as was initially thought by some it’s been another nail in the printed products coffin by diverting existing ad budget.
Lets not fool ourselves, there’s no sustainable revenue in regional newspaper websites and instead focus on making the printed product better, taking our eye off the ball coupled with dumbing down the workforce has taken is where we are today, jacks of all trades and no longer masters of one .
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Attracting large numbers of clicks does not absolve the sites from their responsibility to provide accurate and fair information, any more than it absolves a printed product.
The problem is newspaper managements equate online with cheap. A “never let the facts get in the way of a good clickbait” is as invalid a statement as it well-known and oft-quoted print equivalent.
There again, we could all give up and migrate to Facebook. That’s a site that attracts many people every day. #perishthethought
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