The newspaper circulation revenues have passed the advertising for the world’s newspapers for the first time, said a report from the trade group WAN-IFRA.
The report from the trade group was published on Monday, reported the Poynter.
The report of the trade group said the circulation generated $92bn compared to $87bn for advertising in 2014. The figures were disclosed in world press trends survey released as WAN-IFRA begins its annual World Congress meeting in Washington.
“The basic assumption of the news business model — the subsidy that advertisers have long provided to news content — is gone…,” Larry Kilman, secretary-general of WAN-IFRA, commented in a release.
“This is a seismic shift from a strong business-to-business emphasis – publishers to advertisers – to a growing business-to-consumer emphasis, publishers to audiences.”
The circulation-ad split varies around the world. Some European and Asian papers, with high single-copy prices and a reliance on newsstand sales, have been 50-50 for years.
In the United States, however, until the print ad declines of the last eight years, advertising provided roughly 80% of revenue.
The survey provides a number of other headlines about the state of the business worldwide.
The survey said print provides 93% of revenues in spite of the strong growth in digital subscriptions and advertising.
It also suggested that print will continue to be the major source of revenue for years to come.
A total of 2.7 billion people read newspapers in print and another 770 million on desktop digital platforms.
More than 80% of adults read newspapers on some platform in Australia, the United Kingdom and Chile.
Print circulation was up 6.4% globally in 2014. It particularly saw a strong increases in India while Latin America, the Middle East and Africa experienced growth. However, circulation was down in North America, Europe and Australia.
Conversely, print advertising declined by 5.2% for the year with the biggest losses in North America (7.5%), Asia (6.5%) and Europe (5%). On the other hand, it was up for Latin American and Middle East papers.
Digital advertising was up 8.5% in 2014 but failed to replace print advertising.
The survey also noted the fall of desktop audiences as mobile use continues to surge. While praising the industry for investment and innovation in digital, the report included a pointed push for better metrics:
Though newspapers are now ubiquitous on all media platforms, the measure of their reach and influence continues to be mired in the 20th century, largely relying on print circulation and a variety of separate, non-standardised measures of digital reach. The challenge for the industry is to measure reach of newspaper content on all platforms with new metrics.
The survey also includes a breakdown of average daily time spent with various media:
Smartphone — 97 minutes.
Tablet — 37 minutes.
Television — 81 minutes.
Desktop — 70 minutes.
Radio — 44 minutes.
Print — 33 minutes.
Besides, a separate report from Zenith Optimedia said the overall time with media was up slightly in 2014, but a continuing swing away from traditional media to various forms of digital.
The report by Zenith also said the time spent on reading newspapers in print had fallen 24% since 2010 and predicted further declines by 2017.
