It may not be a surprise to you to learn that daily newspapers sell more copies on a Saturday, but the latest newspaper ABC figures for April demonstrate exactly how marked that ‘Saturday premium’ is.

The figures demonstrate that the average ‘Saturday’ uplift amongst the mid and quality titles is 48% vs. the average circulation for Monday to Friday, but for some titles the Saturday premium is more marked.

For example, the Mail’s Saturday circulation is 54% higher than it’s Monday – Friday average, representing almost another another 1 million copies in circulation. For the Guardian, the uplift is even more marked at 112% – a testament to its longstanding investment in its packed Saturday edition and it’s keen understanding of it’s metropolitan audience’s requirements.

So despite weekly circulations being in terminal decline, Saturday circulations seem to be in rude health, reflecting a differing role for a newspaper on the weekend vs. on weekdays.  Readers see a Saturday newspaper purchase as a reward for a week of hard work, and with more time on their hands, enjoy the amplitude of press on the weekend.

And advertisers haven’t been slow to pick up on the trend, with weekend revenues holding up much better than weekday ones. Advertisers recognise that if they can catch consumers eyes over breakfast on a  Saturday morning, there are 2 whole shopping days for those consumers to turn desire into purchases.

Similar conclusions were reached in research conducted by the Mail on Sunday last year. However, unsurprisingly, their research revealed that newspapers were even better read on Sundays than on Saturdays. They pointed out that Saturday was fast becoming another task focused day, much like the working week, and that Sunday was the only day that consumers truly relaxed and were thus most receptive to advertising messages.

The fact that advertising in a Sunday title only allows the reader one shopping day to turn interest into action was offset by the fact that Sunday evening was by far the most popular time of the week for internet use, and hence Sunday morning was the ideal time for advertisers to prime their audiences online behaviour for later that day.

By: Lucy Jennings

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The release of the monthly ABCs usually means bad news for the newspaper industry.

The latest set, for January 2012, were no better, showing year on year falls across the board.  The worst news was reserved for The Independent, which saw a staggering 37% year on year fall in its circulation. The Guardian and The Times fared little better with falls of 18% and 11% respectively. Even the mighty Mail saw a 6% drop in year on year circulation.

Advertising revenues are on the decline too – unsurprising given falling circulations.  Paywalls and premium mobile versions are proving to be a revenue boon for some, most notably the FT, but not for all – the results of The Times paywall experiment hasn’t seen competitors rushing to follow suit.

You couldn’t be blamed for thinking that print newspapers were becoming an irrelevance to advertisers.  Surely budgets should be following audiences and migrating online rather than being channeled into a sector with dwindling audiences?

Perhaps, but there are many signs that the era of print newspapers isn’t over. Not yet, at least.

In the first instance, some sectors of the newsprint industry are in rude health. Take i, the 20p stablemate to The Independent, which saw its circulation rise by 82% to 243,000 between January 2011 and January 2012. Likewise, The Metro and the Evening Standard are thriving against this generally negative backdrop, showing there is still a desire for news in print albeit it in an easily consumed and free or budget format.

Secondly, the latest figures from the National Readership Survey show that falls in readership have not been as marked as falls in circulation in many cases.  For example, the figures for the last quarter of 2011 showed a slight rise in the readership of The Guardian (+2%) and only a small fall in the readership of The Independent (0.38%), although falls in the readership of the Mail, the Telegraph and Times were largely in line with circulation falls.

Of course, these specific readership results may just be statistical anomalies but perhaps the figures suggest that decreasing frequency of purchase may be more of a factor in newspaper circulation declines that the fall in the overall newspaper reading audience. Or put another way, many of us still like to read newspapers, we’re just doing it less often.

But the third and most influential evidence in our argument in favour of newsprint is that ads in newspapers are still highly influential.  A recent Deloitte study found that 60% of people had visited a website as a result of seeing it advertised in print – just 4% behind the most influential medium, TV, and 10% ahead of online advertising.

The fact is that over 19m of us still read a national daily newspaper and 16m still read a national Sunday newspaper – in both cases, that’s c1/3 of the UK adult population. So although its numbers are in decline, in terms of delivering messages to mass audiences in a highly influential way, newspaper advertising is still second to none.

By: Lucy Jennings

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