Digital news ad revenue climbs 8.5%, but print falls 14%
Digital advertising revenue for news media has grown by 8.5%, new figures released by industry body NewsMediaWorks have revealed.
Revenue – which is calculated by the Standard Media Index and reports on total ad revenue for news media publishers from direct advertisers and agencies – climbed to $119.6m, compared to last year’s third quarter revenue of $110.3m.
Fairfax’s Brisbane Times’ new design
Digital would want to grow based on those numbers!
The sad thing is the that only sector to grow has grown slower than the other three sectors that fell. Digital’s +$9.3m hardly puts a dent in the combined losses of the three other segments of $117.9m. Ouch!
I’m afraid I must correct you. The loss is $54.3m. You have double-counted the top line (which is perfectly understandable, normally totals appear at the bottom).
So print revenues fell $63m YoY, while digital only rose $9m. Therein lies the conundrum for print media. Print revenues are dropping by much more, and much faster, than digital revenues are rising. The acceleration of print declines and the deceleration of digital gains, means the revenue gap is getting bigger…
Those print numbers surely reflect a loss of confidence after staff cuts that went too deep.