January saw a growth in audience for all Trinity Mirror regional daily newspaper websites and associated social media channels according to the latest ABC figures.
All the sites for which the company submits figures showed year-on-year increaeses, with the Liverpool Echo recording the biggest rise in the number of daily average unique browsers over the course of the month.
The Echo recorded a total average of 555,676 unique browsers each day, representing a 31.6pc increase on December 2014.
Wales Online’s daily average of 327,001 saw it record the biggest year-on-year increase at the company, representing a 47pc increase on the previous January.
All titles continued to record increases in the number of readers using their Facebook and Twitter channels during January.
The following table shows the web figures for December in full:
| Website | Daily Average UB | M-o-M change (pc) | Y-o-Y change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 230,651 | 17.2 | 13.1 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 69,581 | 24.1 | 39.3 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 84,812 | 9.9 | 32.9 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 59,774 | 13.3 | 15.3 |
| Liverpool Echo | 555,676 | 31.6 | 30.3 |
| Manchester Evening News | 693,315 | 24.2 | 23.2 |
| Newcastle Live | 255,198 | 25.4 | 31.5 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 112,987 | 11.5 | 36.7 |
| Wales Online | 327,001 | 26.3 | 47 |
The following table shows the Facebook figures for October in full:
| Website | Facebook ‘likes’ | M-o-M change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 197,225 | 3.5 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 26,638 | 5.4 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 94,045 | 7.9 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 62,766 | 4.3 |
| Liverpool Echo | 1,058,829 | 1.7 |
| Manchester Evening News | 888,648 | 4.4 |
| Newcastle Live | 160,559 | 5.5 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 87,520 | 2.3 |
| Wales Online | 206,950 | 6.7 |
The following table shows the Twitter figures for October in full:
| Website | Twitter ‘followers’ | M-o-M change (pc) |
| Birmingham Mail | 125,387 | 3.1 |
| Coventry Telegraph | 41,785 | 2.8 |
| Daily Post (Wales) | 53,257 | 2.6 |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | 37,599 | 2.4 |
| Liverpool Echo | 258,630 | 1.9 |
| Manchester Evening News | 294,050 | 2.4 |
| Newcastle Live | 88,194 | 3.6 |
| Teesside Evening Gazette | 42,595 | 2.5 |
| Wales Online | 98,135 | 4 |
ABC has also revealed Northern Ireland’s daily newspapers all experienced a decline in circulation during the last six months of 2015.
According to the latest figures for the island of Ireland, four Belfast-based titles saw a drop between July and December last year compared to the same period in 2014.
The Belfast Telegraph remains the province’s most read daily newspaper, with an average circulation of 42,808.
However, this represented a 3pc decline in the second half of the year compared to the first half, and a 6.7pc decline compared to the second half of 2014.
Its sister title Sunday Life had an average circulation of 40,057 – a 1.3pc half-yearly decline.
The Irish News recorded an average of 36,974 (a decline of 1.8pc for the period), while the Belfast News Letter recorded a 16,618 average (down 5.1pc for the period).
As part of the same report, annual figures were released for the bi-weekly Derry Post and three Northern Irish weekly newspapers – Enniskillen’s Impartial Reporter, the Fermanagh Herald and the County Derry Post.
The figures for Northern Ireland’s daily and Sunday newspapers in full:
| Newspaper | Average circulation Jul-Dec 2015 | Change on Jan – Jun 2015 (pc) | Y-on-Y change (pc) |
| Belfast Telegraph | 42,808 | -3 | -6.7 |
| Irish News | 36,974 | -1.8 | -4.2 |
| News Letter | 16,618 | -5.1 | -6.9 |
| Sunday Life | 40,057 | -1.3 | -5.2 |
The figures for Northern Ireland’s weekly and bi-weekly newspapers in full:
| Newspaper | Average circulation | Total 2015 change (pc) |
| County Derry Post | 4,198 | -4 |
| Derry News – Monday | 4,388 | -9.9 |
| Derry News – Thursday | 4,165 | -11.7 |
| Fermanagh Herald | 10,829 | -6.7 |
| Impartial Reporter | 11,449 | -5.6 |
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Brilliant – so this obviously means loads more revenue pouring into the company coffers, no further redundancies (indeed, just the opposite), and everything in the garden is rosy again. Hurrah. I knew we’d see it through. Now about my rise…
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Hard to get excited about the equivalent of lots of people looking in the shop window but not actually comings and buying anything, until they step inside and spend money they’re not of value to any business. The sooner the number crunchers and CEOs get their heads around this simple point the better, However sometimes it’s better to plead ignorance s d find something hollow to shout about in the misguided belief that any y/y month/ month ‘increase in figures’ is worth shouting about .
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Any stats for the number of click throughs to online ads? Or is this just an excercise in window shopping with people happily taking the goods for free but not buying anything in the shop?
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Facebook likes is my favourite means lots.
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Boasting about Facebook likes and Twitter followers is truly idiotic. The Social Media managers will bang on about engagement and traffic driven to websites to justify their existences, but they cannot ever tell you how much money comes from these activities. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
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Now the Birmingham Mail have blocked users who use adblocker, guess their figures will be going down?
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Adrian: Good point. When I edited a financial magazine the digital boys (for such they were) descended 17 years ago and tried to sell me the online dream. I interrupted and asked “how much will it bring in?” Apparently, this was an old-fashioned and asininely analogue question, and I was slapped down for being an old fool. It wasn’t about money at all, apparently, but “click-throughs, synergies, visibility, etc.”. I’m not there now but that same website can be found on the web if you look hard enough, having generated extremely – you might say, exclusively – round numbers of cash ever since. Utter piffle, as you say.
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Can someone start a twitter account fresh for an experiment and post the username here with one tweet containing a link to this comment?
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well said @Morgan
it IS all smoke and mirrors as has been mentioned too,
i would like to hear from any ad rep or commercial person responsible for selling on line ads as to whether this type of stat equates to hard fast revenue spends and if so please back it up with actual revenue figures against the figures shown
if we are to believe those pushing this as great news ,then selling commercial digital ads must be easy now due to the increased numbers “looking ” at these sites.
when selling print it all comes down to the number of readers seeing the adverts so growth such as this must mean incereased revenues as a result
if not,theyre just pointless and meaningless web stats.
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The world has gone mad. More people are reading (for free) newspaper web sites. But they’re not clicking on the the adverts. Meanwhile sales of the printed papers (not free) are declining at a rate of knots.
This, apparently, is a good thing.
You really couldn’t make it up.
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Sorry I only understand hard cold facts, how does this set of ‘growth’ figures equate to income for the business?
I think the most telling gauge of the health of the business is their quoting how many ‘likes’ they’ve got on Facebook, a misguided and desperate attempt to pick up any crumbs of readership or popularity but considering dancing toddlers or a piece of rude fruit gets thoudsnds of likes I do t tho l that’s going to convince local businesses to part with hard earned ad spend.
Show us your latest ABC figures and how much revenue is coming into the sites mentioned abs we can make our own
Minds up, until then like archants nationally ridiculed boasts about being the country’s best by 2017, it’s all meaningless.
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Given that everyone commenting here is reading content for free on an advertising funded website are we supposed to view all their comments as parody ?
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Mark: what everyone here asks is what these figures actually mean in terms of revenue – ie. what beneficial effect do they have on TM as a business? As more than one poster mentions there is no accompanying financial information, as there would have been in the long-gone days of booming paper circulations. Going back to those far-off times one analogy that strikes me is asking a newsagent how the local paper was performing that week. “Great, thanks. I’ve had hundreds of people come in and flick through it without anyone buying a copy.” That’s beyond parody, surely.
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yes.yes.yes. I repeat, I repeat, I repeat.
How much extra ad revenue has this produced and what percentage of the total ad revenue is all form of digital advertising.
I’d guess about one quid in ten, but facts, boy, I want facts.
Otherwise, it don’t impress me much.
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Now, if I had made shed loads of money from social media and web advertising I would be shouting it from the rooftops to silence the alleged doom mongers. I say alleged because sadly they have usually been proved right re job losses , sales dives etc.
Something positive like “Digital advertising revenue up to 50 per cent of all ad revenue”. Fantasy I know but you get the drift.
As all we get is the number of click-bait and social media “hits” from whatever company we are left to assume none of this boasting and bluster adds up to much in hard cash terms.
Unless someone wants to enlighten HTFP?
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This appears to be the latest diversion from how bad newspaper sales are in the hope that easily impressed ad reps and gullible business people will part with hard earned money as they believe these sites will bring them rich rewards if they advertise on it.
As someone who has had to try to sell online adverts on newspaper sites let me assure you it means nothing to the purchaser and is no indication of how popular or successful a site is.
When you consider that all site visits are by people going there because it’s free, they aren’t the sort of person who are going to spend money while they’re there. Although print is a dying medium at least people had something to hold, look through,put down pick up and turn to, with digital it’s constantly changing and not user friendly so will NEVER return half decent revenues. Print revenues have moved on and anyone who believes they will ever return is kidding themselves, they’ve gone-end of, and if they’ve gone then online advertising will never replace even a tiny percentage of it. Everyone’s been trying new ways of making in line advertising pay for the past 10 years but so far no ones done it, all that’s actually happened is that some print revenue has been moved on line to hit a target or keep a boss happy. There’s no market for it.
This kind of faux excitement is meaningless, it really is like a shop owner saying they’ve had a fantastic week because hundreds of people filled the shop, in fact ten times more than last week and a hundredfold more than a year ago!
…. But they didn’t buy one item.
As ridiculous as that example seems it’s exactly what these figures equate to and they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on, pointless and fooling no one
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Try selling this business idea to Mr Amazon. Tell him he is behind the times and must set up a website on which he gives away all the contents of his vast warehouses for free while relying on intrusive, infuriating adverts on said platform and various other thingymajigs to bring in the corn, and see if he goes for it. Please. Suits. Tell me you’ve got another plan.
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In business speak they call it footfall.ie the number of people tramping through your shop. The problem is, to use a web term, many are just browsing and do not buy anything. So no money changes hands. see any similarity?
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I liken these wholly pointless stats as a store owner celebrating the fact that more people than ever are shoplifting the goods, more than last month and more than last year yet still no ones paying for anything.
The valid point that keeps being made on here is that this doesn’t equate to revenues,or does it?
It can’t do or they’d be shouting about it
What are the revenues for each of the above sites compared to target? Last month? And last year?
HTFP please ask and TM please tell us
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There is life in the dead tree press.
It comes when journalists are encouraged to tell it as it is in hard news content, instead of being forced into a listicle hinterland.
Only dreaming?
Well Private Eye has just recorded its best ABC figures in 30 years, with sales seriously north of 200,000.
At nearly two quid a copy, it’s still the best bargain on the news stands.
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