Below are statements from: Herald & Times Group, Local World and Newsquest.
Herald & Times Group
* Herald & Times Group paying audience continues to grow Sunday
* Herald is only national title to grow in Scotland, according to today’s ABC figures
Overall paid readership is growing across the Group
Firstly, online audience and subscriber growth have continued to grow and The Herald’s total paid readership is up year-on-year. Although January-June 2014 average print circulation has slipped back by 8% year-on-year, online audiences have increased by 49%, resulting in a total audience increase of 39% to 2.27M each month.
With paid-for website subscriptions rising by 135% and mobile app subscriptions increasing by 269% year-on-year to July 2014, The Herald has also enjoyed continuing growth in paid readership across both print and online.
Sunday Herald growth in print sales
Scotland’s Sunday Herald is the only paper in Scotland to increase readership of its print format in the six months to June 2014, according to the ABC figures released today (national & regional titles). The Sunday Herald enjoyed a 1% growth in average weekly sales in Jan-Jun 2014.
Herald & Times Group’s own internal figures for the subsequent July and early August 2014 period show this rate of growth increasing further, to 13.5% ‘year-on-year’ for the first two weeks in August, which equates to over 28,000 copies sold.
Sunday Herald editor Richard Walker commented that the paper’s choice to become the first regional to back Scottish independence helped along with the launch in May of a new glossy magazine.
Herald and Times’ Managing Director Tim Blott said: “We place our readers at the heart of our development strategy and will continue to provide news and content through whichever platforms they prefer”.
“What is interesting to note is that, despite a tendency by the media to report with alacrity, stories of its own demise, we at Herald & Times Group are seeing a significant increase in paid readership overall”.
Local World
Digital:
The graph below shows Local World average daily unique browsers for January -June 2014 (red bar) which gives a 6 month derived average of 909,367 compared to the aggregated 6 month derived average for Jan-Jun 2013 of 518,296*; a year on year increase of 75.4 per cent. In June 2014 we achieved 90.9% growth year on year.
*In prior ABC returns the ex Iliffe News & Media (“INML”) sites were not incorporated until May 2013 certificate, however the commentary is based upon a like for like comparative and includes 2013 ex INML site traffic for the period from Jan to April 2013.
The digital drive continues apace and growth is again expected in the next certification period. The start of the new ABC certification period, July 2014, saw several notable milestones
* At 1,061,447 we achieved the highest average daily unique browsers figure for a calendar month breaking the 1m mark for first time
* At 93.5% we achieved the highest year on year growth in average daily browsers
* At 19.2m we achieved the highest number of monthly unique browsers
(89% of the audience was UK-based (equates to 17.1m UK unique browsers))
Print:
Our ABC performance of -11.6% year on year (for daily titles Jan-Jun-14) is level with our Jul-Dec 2013 performance of -11.6%.
In Apr-14 we achieved a -10.9% year on year performance, in May-14 we achieved a -11.1% year on year performance and in Jun-14 we improved this to -10.8% year on year; these last three months being our best year on year months for daily titles after a very challenging start to the Jan-Jun 2014 ABC audit period.
This trend is continuing with a -10.3% performance in Jul-14 whilst Aug-14 to date is coming in at -9.8%.
Newsquest
* Newsquest increases its lead as the largest regional online news publisher in the UK
Newsquest Media Group today released its Jan - June 2014 ABC website audit which reports that an average of 936,909 unique browsers accessed its network of 144 local media sites every day – year-on-year growth of 46% (Jan - June 2013: 643,836).
Mark Smith, Newsquest’s Digital Director said: “We’re particularly delighted with such a dramatic increase in the number of people visiting our sites each day.
We had previously been slightly ahead of our nearest peer on daily uniques but we’ve now opened up a clear gap which suggests our programme of editorial and product development is bearing fruit.”
In the first half of the year Newsquest launched a new responsive mobile site across its network and has just this week launched a new look desktop site.
