NAA Releases Profile of American Newspaper Media Industry Revenue 2012

1. Advertising Revenue

• Advertising in printed daily and Sunday newspapers dropped 9 percent in total for 2012, according to data from 15 companies that provided detailed breakouts by category. Retail advertising was off 8 percent, national advertising dropped 15 percent, and classified advertising declined 9 percent. Within the classified category, automotive slumped 9 percent, real estate fell 12 percent, recruitment fell 8 percent, and all other classified edged down 5 percent.
• Of the seven companies that broke out niche publication advertising revenue separately, the category slipped 5 percent overall in 2012 compared with 2011. Of the 11 companies that reported direct marketing dollars, that category slipped 1 percent. Among the eight companies that reported non-daily/weekly advertising, the category fell 6 percent in total last year.
• Digital advertising, which was broken out by 17 companies, rose 4 percent in 2012. Digital advertising accounted for 11 percent of overall total revenue, and comprised 17 percent of advertising revenue.
• Of the 10 companies that broke out “pure-play” digital advertising as a subset of their digital ad numbers, pure-play accounted for 36 percent of the digital ad total and grew by 20 percent. Yet the data suggest there is a wide variation in performance. At the low end, one company saw pure-play advertising account for just 1 percent of digital ad revenue. At the high end, one company now derives 67 percent of its digital advertising revenue from pure play—a sign that management strategy and market are important factors here.
• The difference in year-over-year performance in digital advertising was also significant. Of the 17 companies reporting digital advertising, one saw a double-digit drop in digital ad revenue in 2012 while another saw a gain of 33 percent. That variation, too, suggests that different approaches and markets can have substantially different impact on the bottom line.
• Thirteen of the companies reporting data were able to break out mobile advertising separately. The dollar volume doubled in 2012, though it accounted for less than 1 percent of total revenue.

2. Circulation Revenue