NAA Releases Profile of American Newspaper Media Industry Revenue 2012
These are among the findings of NAA’s annual revenue review of the industry. The data are collected from some 17 companies, private and public, that represent a broad sample of daily newspaper operations across the United States. As it has for many years, NAA uses the sample to project total revenue for the industry overall. That sample represents roughly 40 percent of the daily newspaper circulation in United States and half of the industry’s revenue. For the specific revenue category analysis, NAA has data from 15 different companies, again private and public, that provide breakouts at a much more detailed level. Thus while a sample rather than a census, this is the most complete data set of newspaper media revenue performance available.
The figures are for American newspaper operations and do not include totals for such things as any international operations or other enterprises owned by companies with newspaper media holdings.
Among the findings:
- NAA projects that of the $38.6 billion in total revenue in 2012, $18.9 billion came from print advertising, $3.4 billion from digital advertising, $2.9 billion from advertising from direct marketing/niche and non-daily publications, $10.4 billion from circulation and $3 billion from new revenue sources. (The projections do not include revenue from weekly papers not owned by daily newspaper companies.)
- Combined digital revenue (from circulation, advertising, e-commerce, digital marketing and other sources) made up 11 percent of total revenue in 2012 for the 13 companies that broke out this data, though that varied by company. It was as high as 29 percent and as low as 8 percent.
- The 5 percent overall growth in circulation revenue was the first gain in this category for the newspaper industry since 2003. Within that total, for the companies supplying detailed breakdowns, digital-only circulation revenue grew 275 percent; print and digital bundled circulation revenue grew 499 percent. Largely as a result of more organizations shifting toward bundling print and online into combined access subscriptions, print-only circulation revenue declined 14 percent.
- Within the 8 percent growth in new revenue sources, revenue from digital agency consulting for local businesses grew 91 percent. E-commerce revenue grew 20 percent.
- Mobile ad revenue, while small (less than 1 percent of total revenue), doubled (up 100 percent), according to the papers that broke that data out separately.
- When revenue from print, digital, niche and delivery of preprints outside of newspapers is combined (based on data from 15 companies that provided such breakouts), total advertising revenue made up 65 percent of overall revenue in 2012. Within that figure, traditional print newspaper advertising fell 9 percent and now makes up 46 percent of total revenue. Digital advertising increased 5 percent and now makes up 11 percent; pure-play digital advertising (digital only) increased 20 percent.
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