Performance Indicators : Newspapers 2011/03/15 Samuel-f Parent Éducation, Advertising, Measurement, Ad Spend, Traditional media, Newspapers performance indicator, newspapers, weekly, print media, daily, paper

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We talk a lot about the digital revolution that traditional media is being put through: upheaval, readership and audience shrinkage, bankruptcy, pay walls… This post is a major update to a previous one “Traditional media performance indicators” (20 January 2010), however this one is segmented in that we’ll discuss only daily newspapers in this post. Others will follow to cover individually television, radio, magazines and other media platforms.

What’s the situation really like in 2011? Traditional media are not dead – not yet, and not for a while at least. They’re not all as strong as they’ve once been, but they still occupy an important place in the media landscape. Let’s look at the situation with Daily Newspapers a bit:

Readership & Circulation:

  • 47% = daily reach (A18+) for printed newspapers in Canada in 2009 (NadBank 2010)
    • 44% for the Saturday edition, 23% for the Sunday edition
  • 78% of all Canadians 18+ read either a printed or online daily newspaper at least weekly (NadBank 2010)
    • 73% read the printed version,
    • 22% read the online version (obviously there’s duplication here)
      • 4% of online readers NEVER read a printed copy.
      • Readers spend more time with the printed edition than the online edition : 232 minutes weekly vs 125 in Toronto, 232 vs 135 in Montréal, 245 vs 148 in Gatineau, 212 vs 92 in Québec City
      • 25-34 year olds read less newspapers than any other group (66% weekly) vs 79% for 65+ year olds
    • 44% newspaper reach in Toronto, 48% in Montréal, 48% in Gatineau, 50% in Québec City (NadBank 2009)
    • 71% daily reach for printed dailies in Toronto, 73% in Montréal, 72% in Gatineau, 76% in Québec City (NadBank 2009)
    • The online version of dailies is now 76% in Toronto, 77% in Montréal, 79% in Gatineau and 79% in Québec City (NadBank 2009)
  • 73% weekly reach (NADBank A18+ 2009 average) which is slightly more than Internet (71%)
    • 73% weekly reach in French Canada
  • 74% of American adults read a newspaper at least once a week, either printed or online. In certain markets, it’s 90% (Scarborough Research) (thanks @steverubel)
    • 79% of white collars
    • 82% adults with household income over $100k
    • 84% university grads
  • 70% of American adults read at least one printed daily newspaper weekly (Scarborough Research)
  • The average daily paper has 18,000 Twitter fans and tweets 11x daily (eMarketer Bivings Group) (thanks @TomTsinas)
  • The top3 retweeted dailies are : The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and  Los Angeles Times, all over 1200 times in September 2009.
  • -8.7% = drop in circulation weekdays among the top 604 American newspapers between March 2009 and March 2010 (ABC 2010)
    • -6.5% =  drop in circulation on Sundays among the top 548 editions.
  • 3.3 readers per copy on average in 2009 – 7.5% growth in 3 years (Scarborough Research).
  • 26% of Americans read a printed daily newspaper daily in 2010 vs 30% in 2008 and 38% in 2006 (PEW 2010/09)
    • Only 8% of the 26% in 2010 are aged between 18 and 30 years old, comparatively to the 30% this segment represents of the US population.
    • 44% get their daily news online, 39% on TV
    • 17% read a newspapers’ website daily in 2010, vs 13% in 2008 and 9% in 2006.
  • 48% of Montrealers read a daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, (NADbank 2010 Mtl and other markets)
    • 77% only do so 1x / week, 18% of total weekly readership is exclusively online
    • 44% of Torontonians read a daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, 76% weekly / 25% online only
    • 51% of Vancouver’s population read a daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, 79% weekly / 19% online only
    • 49% of Ottawa-Gatineau’s read a population daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, 79% weekly / 30% online only
    • 47% of Calgary’s population read a daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, 78% weekly / 25% online only
    • 47% of Edmonton’s population read a daily newspaper in Print or Online daily, 80% weekly / 24% online only
  • In Quebec, daily newspapers’ circulation in 2010 vs 2009 according to ABC (2010/09) :
    • Le Devoir            +9.08%
    • Le Nouvelliste +4.21%
    • La Presse            +0.1%
    • La Voix de l’Est -1.16%
    • Le Quotidiens   -1.64%
    • La Tribune          -1.88%
    • Le Soleil              -2.54%
    • The Record        -5.59%
    • The Gazette      -7.67%
    • Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec are not audited by ABC…
  • Canadian daily newspaper circulation is stable on average in 2010 vs 2009 ABC 2010/09 but:
    • Calgary Herald  +9.46% followed by
    • Vancouver Sun                +3.88%, the worst drop is at
    • The National Post           -2.28%
  • -5% drop in circulation at daily newspapers on weekdays between April and September 2010 according to ABC comparatively to -10.6% for 2009 vs 2008
    • -4.5% drop for the Sunday edition compared to -7.5% for 2009 vs 2008

Preference & trust

  • 11% believe daily newspapers are the best source to find news in the US, far behind the Internet at 44% (Rasmussen Reports 2010/09/27)
    • According to PEW, it’s 26% (2010) – daily newspapers have lost 32% of their readers in 4 years!
    • 17% read a daily newspaper online in 2010 according to PEW
    • 31% of Americans get their news from newspapers, down from 2003’s 50%, vs 41% getting their news online (PEW 2011/01/05)

Time Spent

  • 126 minutes weekly spent with newspapers (NADBank 2009 average A18+) or 3% of total media time spent, slightly more than with magazines, but far behind Internet
    • 135 minutes weekly spent in French Canada, 4%
  • American men spend 2.4 hours a week with newspapers vs 1 hour for women (8+ years old) (TNS Newzoo BV)
  • 8-18 year olds (Gen M2) spent an average 3 minutes daily with newspapers in 2009 vs 7 in 1999 out of a total 10:45 hours of media time daily (Kaiser Family Foundation – Harris Research)
  • -10.5% drop in time spent with daily newspapers in the US in 2010 (29.7min/day) vs 2009 (33.2min/day) following the 13% drop in 2009 vs 2008 (38.1min/day) (eMarketer 2010/12/29)
    • According to Forrester, Americains spend 2.5 hours with dailies weekly in 2010, down 26% since 2005  (Forrester 2010/12/13)

Pay Wall

  • The New York Times grew it’s online audience by 10% and print circulation by 2% in 2009. Ad revenues fell 25%. (Wall Street Journal) (thanks @TomTsinas)
  • -47% drop in page views and unique visitors at Newsday.com since the start of their paywall. (Nielsen January 2010)
    • Pay wall shrunk NewsDay.com’s reach by 21% between October and November 2009 (Nielsen). Page views fell  34%.

Online newspapers

  • 19% of American adults have visited a daily newspaper’s website in the last week (Scarborough Research)
  • Between 2005–2009, unique visitors to daily newspaper websites have gone from41,1 million to 71,8 million, while revenue has dropped from $22.2 billion to $12.2 billion (1st half of each year) (Newspaper Association of America)
  • Newspaper websites attract 37% (72M UVs) of all Americans online monthly (Nielsen).
  • 24% of newspapers and magazine readers in the UK prefer the print version, 31% prefer the iPad/tablet version, 26% perfer it online, 12% on their mobile device and 7% on another type of reader. (Cooper Murphy Webb 2010/08)
  • 105.3 million Americans consult daily newspaper websites (avg Oct-Dec comScore US 2010)
    • 62% of Americans online consult a daily newspaper’s website monthly
  • Top5 newspapers most read online (Marketing Charts 2010/05):
    • The New York Times     =             32.5k vu
    • Tribune Newspapers    =             24.8k vu
    • Advance Internet           =             18.1k vu
    • USA Today                        =             16.8k vu
    • WashingtonPost.com   =             16.7k vu

Ad Spend

  • Coupons use increased 36% in 2009 – Sunday flyers account for 70% of all coupon use in the US (Borrell Associates)
  • -44.24% = drop in total revenue (print + online combined) for newspapers in the US between 2006 and 2009. (NAA 2010)
    • -47.7% between 2005 and 2009
  • -3.7% drop in revenus on average in Q3 or 2010 (NAA 2010/11/12)
  • American daily newspapers cut 105 000 jobs between 2001 (414 000 jobs total) and 2009 (309 000 jobs total). (US Census Bureau) The job loss rate between 2001-2006 was 3,5% yearly.  it was 5% between 2007-2009.

While you’re waiting for my future posts on other media’s performance indicators, please consult my previous posts:

 

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