NAA Releases Profile of American Newspaper Media Industry Revenue 2012

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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