NRS PADD: Industry analysis
MGOMD’s Emma Cranston dissects the latest magazine and newsbrand readership figures from PAMCo – and what the results mean for the publishing and advertising sectors
PAMCo’s latest release of NRS PADD data (Oct 15 – Sept 16) demonstrates a positive story of the overall reach for the cross platform newsbrand and magazine market.
Of the titles analysed, there has been a growth of +1% year-on-year overall which has been driven by mobile, demonstrating the power of this platform and the need for all publishers to ensure their mobile offering is slick, easy to use and adaptable.
Furthermore, a stat from the data release that is often overseen (or overshadowed by other new media platforms) is that 95% of British adults consume newspaper or magazine content in a month on print, PC or mobile, this is a stat that shouldn’t be forgotten when planning.
Additionally, it’s not the older audience driving this, 15-34 year old adults have a higher reach of published media (97%) than all adults (95%).
It speaks volumes that the younger audience still see traditional newsbrands and magazines as a port of call for news/celebrity/beauty/fashion advice.
However, it’s a shame this is not reflected in the advertising revenue. The publishing market has seen a significant drop in print revenue (greater than the extent of the circulation decline according to Nielsen Media) and they are finding it hard to monetise their digital inventory to the same extent as the loss of their print revenue.
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Producing high quality investigative journalism does cost money; the tighter we squeeze the margins the less we will be able to access such journalism.
Overall, the UK is consuming more media content than ever before, however, there is only so much advertising revenue to go around. It’s understandable that advertisers are chasing the more exciting, new, “must go to” platforms, however should they be looking beyond this?
What website do advertisers actually want to be seen against? What website content attracts the highest engagement? Research conducted by comScore demonstrates that premium publishers drive a higher ad recall than other websites.
Can PAMCo’s new AMP readership data save publishers’ day? Their new audience data will be able to present a true reflection of a publisher’s total deduped reach and provide the leverage and comparability with other media publishers.
They are hoping to be able to give a new currency for publishers; reach. It is not going to be an easy process to convert from NRS to AMP; there has been extensive research and testing to get this right.
The new methodology has now been confirmed and agreed by all those involved in the JIC (media owners, agencies and trade body). PAMCo will start to integrate AMP data into 2017 NRS numbers with a full AMP release in 2018. The advantage of AMP is that as our media consumption via device and platform evolves the new system will be able to adapt with this.
PAMCo’s AMP development is running alongside Project Rio (or Project Juno if you are a little behind on the evolution of this project name), which entails an investigation into the possibility of a combined sales team across various newspaper groups to drive savings/leverage.
The magazine industry is now starting to have conversations about some kind of sales collaboration, but this is very early days. Both project Rio and AMP could drive a transformational change for the publishing industry, and I am sure that they will be aligned within their developments to ensure an overall greater outcome for publishers.
Emma Cranston is head of publishing at Manning Gottlieb OMD