Unlike US, Canada Newspaper Revenues, Readership Remain Strong

Robust online ad revenues of $196 million (up 29 percent) helped offset declines in print advertising and circulation sales to keep total Canadian newspaper revenue steady - down just 0.8 percent from 2006 - according to data from the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA), MarketingCharts reports.

(See table of online ad revenue, 2007 vs. 2006. )

Highlights of the CNA’s data:

• Combined, online and print ad revenue and circulation sales totaled $3.576 billion in 2007.
• Print ad revenues (view table) totaled nearly $2.6 billion, down 2.4 percent from 2006 levels.
• Circulation sales (see table) were down slightly, dropping 1.2 percent to $808.9 million.

The slight fall in total revenues is in stark contrast to the sharp revenue decline of the U.S. newspaper industry (see graph of U.S. vs Canada revenues).

• U.S. total print ad revenues plummeted 9.4 percent, to $42 billion, in 2007 - the biggest year-over-year decline since 1950, when the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) first began charting numbers.
• U.S. online ad revenues only slightly softened the fall, rising 18.8 percent, compared with 31.4 percent in ‘06, according to the NAA.

Readership

Canadian newspaper readers use both printed and online editions, with a total reach of 78 percent per week, according to the 2007 Newspaper Audience Databank (NAD) study (pdf).

• Some 17 percent of adults read a daily newspaper on the internet.
• Just 3 percent read online-only editions.
• Overall, online readership of daily newspapers has grown 11 percent from 2006.

Readership for both daily and weekly newspapers is still high:

• Three quarters of Canadians, 13.9 million adults 18+, read a printed edition of a daily newspaper each week.
• 73 percent of Canadians usually read local news.

For weekly newspapers, there are…

• 11.7 million readers in the top 17 markets (vs. 11.8 million in 2006)
• 10.3 million in the top ten markets (vs. 10.4 million in ‘06), with more than 7 in 10 Canadians reading weeklies. (See table of weekly readership percentage, by city.)
• More than 8.7 million in the markets of Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver (vs. 8.8 million in ‘06).

Frequency

Across all Canadian markets…

• 50 percent of adults 18+ read a newspaper “yesterday.”
• 46 percent read a newspaper “last Saturday.”
• 26 percent read a newspaper “last Sunday.”
• In a typical week, by Friday 70 percent of adults have read at least one issue of a daily newspaper and 78 percent have read a newspaper, printed or online.

About the data: CNA data, collected by Borrell Associates, contains revenue results from circulation, print and online activities from 93 daily newspapers, representing 95.5 percent of daily circulation in Canada. Estimates were made for each non-participating title by developing metrics based on newspapers of comparable circulation for which data had been received.

The 2007 NADbank study includes readership and demographic data from 82 Canadian daily newspapers and 2 Detroit dailies in 54 urban markets and their extended market areas, representing 97 percent of total weekly circulation and 71 percent of Canadian adults. The NAD provides additional readership data for 57 community newspapers in 33 markets. Product data will be released in May ‘08.