Project Ireland 2040 advertising

While the fingers are being pointed and denials of any wrongdoing abound concerning the Project Ireland 2040 advertising in both national and regional papers – there is one solution. There’s no need to set up a committee to investigate what happened when we already have an instrument to deal with this – the Advertising Standards Authority. They set-out, clearly, the rules governing the treatment of ‘advertorials’ in newspapers. Section 3.33 states ‘Advertorials should be clearly identified, should be distinguished from editorial matter and should comply with the Code’. Furthermore in a ruling against Irish Life and IN&M in 2016 where

Irish Newspaper Circulation July-Dec 2017 Island of Ireland Report

We have thirteen National titles available for selection every morning and twelve to choose from every Sunday. The figures here are the circulations of national newspapers for the period of July to December 2017 and are compared to the same six months in 2016. The stark reality is that in the intervening period, the newspapers below sold ten million fewer copies per annum in comparison to the previous year. Interestingly five years ago five titles managed to sell more than 100,000 copies, today this stands at two. The total market (sum of the daily and Sunday circulation) decline slowed to

ABC Circulation January 2018

The first audit of 2018 appeared earlier. Oddly there were a few surprises in a fairly predictable market. Month on month the Sunday Mirror managed to add 3,000 copies to its tally and the Sunday Times managed a 1,600 increase without any trickery in the bulks department. The Sun added 1,400 on the month and again maintaining the same bulk level as last month. Conversely, the Mail on Sunday ‘dropped’ 5,200 on December. This doesn’t seem to be fright and flight by the buying public but perhaps more a ‘road to Damascus’ moment for dmg Media. This month shows a

Daily Star Sale

Trinity Mirror has announced that they have made an offer to buy The Daily Star, Daily Star Sunday, Daily Express and Sunday Express. Naturally, it’s all subject to regulatory approval, which in itself is a further hurdle. The main stay of that business is in the UK and the R.o.I. publishing concerns are a side show at best – for the main players. However for the publishing industry here it could be a game changer. There’s an agreement (and not a very transparent) between IN&M and Northern and Shell to publish the Irish Daily Star in Ireland (the Island theof).

JNLR Radio Listenership 2017 Q4

The quarterly JNLR was released today and it shows that radio listenership remained static at 83%. Radio listenership in the capital stands at 78% which, although below the levels found nationally, it represents a third quarterly rise in listenership up from 75% at the start of the year. RTE1 suffered its first decline since 2016Q1 down one point to 23%. Both Newstalk and TodayFM each lost a point down to 10% each. 2FM is now second to RTE1 at 11% having had a static book. Considering it was at 9% in 2016Q3 (and taking flack) it’s not a bad result.

ABC Newspaper Circulation December 2017

December is never a flattering month for print titles with punters getting into the yuletide spirit and having just a weather eye on the papers.  Although I did note on one of the certs that the online version of The Sun recorded 4.1m visitors to the site on Christmas Day, so perhaps is just migration. One shining light this month was The Sun which was up 1,000 on the month and without any manoeuvring in the background with bulks. The Star was down 800 copies and the Mirror stayed static. Surprisingly, and I say that for a paper that makes

ABC Newspaper Circulation November 2017

The penultimate ABC for 2017 has been released. Forecasting the outturn for the year as the exclusion of one month won’t make a huge difference at this point it looks as if the market will, again, decline between 7%/8% year on year. The titles examined here are a decent bellwether for the market as a whole, so when the full numbers are released in February for 2017 don’t be aghast at a 7% drop. In the mornings The Sun and The Irish Daily Mail show the biggest declines month on month at 3%. However, it’s more tinkering with their multiple

Newspaper Revenues and other numbers!

Here’s an interesting take on the circulation numbers. The ABC certificates split out the sales of each title on a Monday to Friday basis and then single out their Saturday sales (obviously just for the mornings). In the mornings it allows you to see uplift, if any, of a titles Saturday edition and overall it allows you to see how much revenue is being generated by the title. All the revenues are what would be generated ‘at the till’ and the figures are hard copy sales, old Skool! The numbers below are all based on November 2017 certificates and bulks

ABC Newspaper Circulation December 2017

December is never a flattering month for print titles with punters getting into the yuletide spirit and having just a weather eye on the papers.  Although I did note on one of the certs that the online version of The Sun recorded 4.1m visitors to the site on Christmas Day, so perhaps is just migration. One shining light this month was The Sun which was up 1,000 on the month and without any manoeuvring in the background with bulks. The Star was down 800 copies and the Mirror stayed static. Surprisingly, and I say that for a paper that makes

ABC Newspaper Circulation October2017

  October ABC’s are off the presses and show a fairly sharp drop of 1900 copies of the Daily Star over the month. The other tabloids managed to keep the drop to three figures over September. Taken together the tabloids are down 3,000 or 2% on the month. Again, we can ignore the (incredible) year on year figure for The Times given their new found interest in bulks. Month on month the morning market was down 5,000 or 3% and as you can see for the graphic, going on past experience, things don’t get better as the year draws to

JNLR 2017Q3

The quarterly results for the JNLR have been released and must bring come comfort to the radio sector. Radio listenership was up one point to 83%, back to where it was at the beginning of 2016. A driver in that growth was an increase in radio listenership in Dublin from 75% to 77% over the quarter. On the back of this increased radio popularity the stations fared well over the year. 2FM managed a two point increase on the same period last year and it brings them back to their 2015 levels. After all the tinkering that the station has

ABC Newspaper Circulation September 2017

The lift seen last month, on the back of the Premier League, dissipated this month – which is a feature of the August/September dynamic. The tabloids lost to various degrees the Daily Star falling the most at 1,700 from their August figure. The Times (the Ireland edition) is some respects still flatters to deceive. Their certified figure of over 10,000 is aided and abetted in this month’s cert by no fewer than 6,000 in multiple copy sales or bulks. This multiple copies policy started this year in June and has continued since. But this ‘sampling exercise’ looks like it’s paying

ABC Newspaper Circulation August 2017

Nothing gives a shot to the arm to a tabloid than the start of the Premier League. Historically the effects are short lived, but a welcome respite to publishers. August saw the beginning of the soccer season across the water and the tabloids got a collective lift of 4% on July but were still down 3% year on year. The Daily Star marginally saw the biggest lift close to a 2,400 increase. In comparison the Daily Mirror only saw an increase of 362 copies. Turning to the Sunday papers: The Sun on Sunday had a good lift of nearly 2,500

Digital News Report 2017

The “Reuters Institute Digital News Report” was released last week with some very interesting results. The report covers ore than forty different countries researching the extent of media usage in that country and, more specifically, digital usage when it comes to sources of news. It’s a huge endeavour and the Institute very kindly gave me a copy of the raw data to fool around with. You can have a look at the broader results here. Below I’d looked at our own media and pulled out some data that I thought was of interest (each to their own!). The report makes

Irish Newspaper Circulation January-June 2017

The Island of Ireland report for the National newspapers ABC’s was released covering the period January to June 2017. Looking at the overall picture, the market for National newspapers has fallen by 8.2% over the last twelve months. Overview That’s a decline of 94,000 copies over the same period last year.  There was a 7.6% decline for Sunday nationals or a reduction of 51,000 copies and an 8.9% decline for morning nationals equating to a 37,000 drop in their sales. In the last five years, the market for Sunday newspapers has fallen by 32% or by more than 293,000 copies

July 2017 ABC Newspaper Circulation

The ABC’s for the monthly certificates came out today, as well as the Island of Ireland Report. Results are below. Nothing out of the ordinary in any of the figures. The Daily Star Sunday had a good month adding 9% and the Mirror and People all showed increases.       Title Jul-17 Jun-17 Jul-16 M/M Y/Y % M/M % Y/Y Daily Mirror 33,197 32,804 36,589 393 -3,392 1% -9% Daily Record 341 269 336 72 5 27% 1% Irish Daily Star 49,100 49,336 52,493 -236 -3,393 0% -6% The Sun 56,140 55,402 65,625 738 -9,485 1% -14% Tabloids 138,778

JNLR 2017Q2

  The quarterly JNLR radio research was released earlier and the first item of note is that the brakes look like they have been finally applied to the overall listenership of both National and Dublin listenership, national steady at 82% and Dublin at 75%. National Looking at the stations in the National picture, Today FM is the only station to show a percentage drop book on book – down one point to 10% their lowest figure to date. The rest of the stations remained very much as is/was.       Year On Year Book on Book Station 2017Q2 2016Q2

ABC Irish Newspaper Circulation June 2017

June ABC’s and this brings us to the half way mark for 2017. For the monthly publishers their Jan-June 2017 figure are available (to calculate) but the full Island of Ireland report is not out until 17th of August. Some of the papers’ numbers look extreme (in percentage terms) but all have a logical explanation. As a block the tabloids are down 13% year on year, the decline can be attributed to The Sun’s decline of 20% – however this time last year The Sun and its Sunday sister were in the middle of a price promotion on the back

IAB 2016 Digital Ad Spending

There was an interesting report released by AIB Europe in late June where it showed the meteoric rise of digital spending across Europe in 2016. The topline was that digital spending in Europe grew by 12% in 2016 compared to 2015m with the market now worth €41.9 billion per annum. The big mover was “mobile display” which grew by 53% in the year and it accounts for 33% of the ‘display’ market. Across Europe the market loos in good shape except for spend on print and OOH. Looking towards home, the in the Republic of Ireland we spent €444 million

ABC Irish Newspaper Circulation May 2017

May circulation figures throw up nothing out of the ordinary this month. In the morning the tabloids are down collectively nearly 7,000 with the Daily Star dropping 2,700 on the month and The Sun not far off that down 2,400. The morning market is down 8,000 driven mainly by the fall in tabloid sales. Like the morning market, the Sunday market is continuing the downward trend. The Sunday Mirror and People added to their numbers, just shy of 1,000 in both cases. The big loser this month was The Sunday Times falling 2,500 on the month. Title May-17 17-Apr May-16