Regional publisher Newsquest saw its online advertising revenues grow by nearly a fifth during 2013, the company’s US owners have disclosed.
Although print advertising revenue was down 6.5pc year-on-year due to what the company termed “continued economic stagnation,” online ad revenues rose by 19pc.
The figures were disclosed by executives of Newsquest’s parent company Gannett at a briefing for analysts held yesterday.
Chief financial officer Victoria Dux Harker said: “In the UK, Newsquest advertising revenue was down 6.5pc in local currency due to continued economic stagnation, but it was notable that Newsquest online advertising revenue grew 19pc year-over-year, driven by retail categories across a small but growing base.”
Ms Harker added that cover pricing changes across Gannett’s US and UK titles had led to a small increase in circulation revenue of 1.6pc.
Newsquest titles such as the Oxford Mail, South Wales Argus, Worcester News, Northern Echo and Lancashire Telegraph all unveiled cover price increases of 30pc or more during the course of 2013.
“The USA TODAY group recorded their first circulation revenue increase in several years, driven by their richer content and broader appeal, which supported single copy and home delivery price increases,” she said.
“Newsquest was also able to sustain similar pricing changes, driving a circulation revenue increase of about 6pc in local currency, its third consecutive quarterly growth.”
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1.6 pc increase in circulation revenue by their cover price rise increase! This shows what a total disaster this has been. Circulation has plummeted at most of the dailies.
Would it not have made more sense to have made a modest increase of, say, 5 per cent and keep the readers. But the clowns who thought up this wheeze will retain their highly paid positions while the workers will lose their jobs because their papers don’t make enough money or don’t have enough readers.
Newsquest is milking this industry dry and all that will be left is a few husks that were once great newspapers.
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Fantastic news apparently – pay rises all round then – the first ones for nearly four years for most of the staff.
Of course one thing the report fails to disclose is spending on its online business.
It is one thing to increase revenue but that pays no attention to costs in terms of the recruitment of digital sales staff etc.
Do the online budget figures also reflect proper costings for generating the editorial content the sites rely on?
It also fails to state what the 1.6 per cent increase in circulation revenue actually is, compared to 19 per cent for digital.
The two will not bear comparison.
One will be millions, the other will be pennies.
Online is the future, someone just needs to find a way of making some money from it. Newsquest certainly hasn’t.
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Thirty per cent plus price rises yield a 1.6 per cent rise in circulation revenue. I don’t think Mr Macawber would be very impressed, though he would no doubt recognised the manner in which Newsquest treats its staff as something that would not look out of place within the pages of a Charles Dickens novel.
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Amazing you can find a Newsquest spokesman when the news is deemed positive. When the news is negative – which is 95% of the time – they’re nowhere to be found…
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How right the first post is about the price increase. I went in to two supermarkets last Sunday and both had large piles of the Newsquest daily from the Saturday.
To increase the cover price by such a large amount when ordinary people’s incomes were – and still are – under severe pressure was monumental folly.
The new set of circulation figures will make very grim reading.
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