“Circulation is like the sun. It continues to rise in the East and decline in the West,” said Christoph Riess, CEO of WAN-IFRA, who presented the annual survey Thursday at the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Vienna, Austria.

The survey found:

• Media consumption patterns vary widely across the globe. Print circulation is increasing in Asia, but declining in mature markets in the West.
• The number of titles globally is consolidating.
• The main decline is in free dailies. “For free dailies, the hype is over,” said Mr Riess.
• For advertisers, newspapers are more time efficient and effective than other media.
• Newspapers reach more people than the internet. On a typical day newspapers
• reach 20 percent more people world-wide than the internet reaches, ever.
• Digital advertising revenues are not compensating for the ad revenues lost to print.
• Social media are changing the concept and process of content gathering and dissemination. But the revenue model for news companies, in the social media arena, remains hard to find.
• The business of news publishing has become one of constant updating, of monitoring, distilling and repacking information.
• The new digital business is not the traditional newspaper business.

Mr Riess’s presentation focused on six key areas: the media consumption shift; economic developments; newspaper circulation and number of titles; advertising expenditure by media; newspaper revenue; and internet versus mobile.

When measured in minutes per day, media consumption patterns vary widely. For example, television dominates in the United States, internet accounts for one-third of media time in Austria, and digital gets just a fraction of consumption time in Russia. Time spent with newspapers is low when considering their impact and influence on society, compared with other media – and to their advertising revenues.

“Newspapers have always had a lower percentage of the time spent by the media user, relative to the high advertising revenues that newspapers produce,” said Mr Riess. Newspapers account for 8% of media consumption time, but 20% of all advertising revenue. “We have always been extremely efficient in using the time of our readers. But now we are in a more challenging environment, because readers are more promiscuous, they have more choices, they read newspapers with less frequency. We have to do more to attract them, find new ways to garner loyalty.”

There is no doubt that internet consumption is increasing world-wide, to the cost of broadcast more than other media, the report found. Radio consumption. in terms of minutes per day has fallen 23 percent since 2006, compared to 7 percent for newspapers, it found.

Economic Developments

There appears to be a structural shift in advertising and newspaper revenues. Long mirroring the growth and contraction of Gross Domestic Product, both global advertising revenues and newspaper revenues appear to be decoupling from their patterns related to GDP.

In the 20 years to 2001, advertising revenue increased more than GDP in an upturn, and fell farther than GDP in a downturn. “But this has not been true since the 2001 downturn,” said Mr Riess. “After 2001, we have had good growth in Asia, but, contrary to the previous 20 years, advertising revenues increases were not higher than GDP during a recovery. And we have a greater decoupling of newspaper advertising revenues, which don’t follow the recovery as in the past. We have a structural change in general, especially in newspapers.”

Newspaper Circulation

Daily print newspaper circulation declined from 528 million in 2009 to 519 million in 2010, a drop of about 2 percent. But what has been lost to print has been more than made up by digital newspaper readers. Digital audiences are typically a third of print readership. So against a 2 percent decline, digital growth is significantly greater.

In fact, when measured in terms of readership, newspapers reach 2.3 billion people every day, 20 percent more than the 1.9 billion that the internet reaches world-wide.

Again, circulation patterns vary greatly world-wide. In the Asia Pacific region, circulations increased 7 percent from 2009 to 2010, and 16 percent over five years. Latin America also saw significant circulation increases – 2 percent last year and 4.5 percent over the past five years. But drops occurred in Europe – 2.5 percent year-on-year and 11.8 percent over five years in Western Europe and 12 percent last year and 10 percent over five years in Eastern and Central Europe. The decreases were greatest in North America, where newspapers have lost 11 percent of circulation year-on-year and 17 percent over five years.

Newspaper readership is highest in Iceland, where 96 percent of the population reads a daily newspaper, followed by Japan (92 percent), Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (82 percent), and Finland and Hong Kong (80 percent). Japan is the leader when it comes newspaper sales, with the average circulation of its newspapers at 461,000 – an enormous total. Austria comes second with an average of 162,000 per title.

Advertising Expenditures by Media

Television continues to be the world’s largest advertising medium, with a total ad expenditure of 180 billion US dollars in 2010. Newspapers were second with 97 billion, followed by internet (62 billion), magazines (43 billion) and radio (32 billion).

But newspapers are lagging behind both television and internet when it comes to growth trends, and internet is outpacing both, the survey found. Internet advertising grew 22 percent year-on-year in Asia in 2010, compared with 11 percent for television and 3 percent for newspapers. In Europe, internet advertising rose 14 percent from 2009, compared with 9 percent for TV, while newspaper advertising fell 1 percent.

Newspaper Revenues

Newspaper advertising revenues took a big hit in the global recession, but the decline slowed in 2010. Globally, newspaper advertising revenues declined 23 percent over five years and only 3 percent last year.

In North America, newspaper advertising revenues were down 17 percent for the five-year period but increased 1 percent last year. In Western Europe, they were down 12 percent over five years and up 2 percent last year. Eastern Europe saw advertising revenues fall 3 percent over five years and 3 percent last year. In the Asia Pacific, newspaper advertising revenues were down 1 percent over five years but up 4 percent last year. In Latin America, the revenues declined 23 percent over five years and 3 percent last year.

Mobile vs. Internet

Which offers a better business model for newspaper companies – internet or mobile? Again, it depends on the market, said Mr Riess, and there are wide variations around the world.

In Russia, for example, mobile penetration is 130 percent compared with 30 percent for internet, so clearly mobile offers better opportunities. The same goes for India, where 60 percent of its 1 billion population has mobile telephones. In the United States, where the penetration of both mobile and internet is high, both platforms offer opportunities.

The internet advertising model has been well-established, but most of the revenue goes to search engines – 65 percent to Google alone.

On the mobile platform, the paid-content model is well-established, since users accept monthly contracts, pre-paid phones and paid-for apps. But here too, new players – Apple and the mobile operators – take a large share of the revenue. “If we’re not careful in the newspaper industry, they will take away our business,” Mr Riess said.

That’s not all! The readership of Dainik Jagran reaches 54 million copies daily. The second newspaper in India in terms of readership is 20 million copies behind. Jagran is the India superbrand. According to BBC, it is the most trusted source of news in press media in India.

Dainik Jagran follows these few guiding principles:

1. Content customization. The content in the newspaper is changed every 25 km in India. The content has been adapted to reflect the colloquial characteristics of different regions.

2. Listening to readers

3. Speed (75 printing centers are located in different localization for the newspaper to be delivered to households at 5 AM in the morning)

4. Responsibility

In India, a business model basing only on circulation, is not a money making model. Dainik Jagran tries to understand its readers, divides them into different target groups and reaches them with different products. Magazines for youngsters, billingual dailies are just examples. The idea is to catch both readership and advertising. For example, the magazine for younger readers – “I next” – launched in December 2006, has 12 editions so far and a reader base of 2,1 million.

Jagran is making efforts to build a new readership base. Except for Dainik Jagran, publisher’s  other newspapers give extra 20 million readers. Together as a group they have about 70 million readers per day!

Print is not all, following are other fields Jagran is active at:

• Jagran.com (69 million pageviews, 1.7 million users a month – largest website in the country)
• J9 – mobile division.
• Jagran Engage – outdoor division. Launched in 2006 already in top 10 players.
• Jagran solutions – BTL agency. One of the top BTL agencies in India.
• Jagran research – as a company Jagran is very research oriented. They do yearbooks, and glance series.
• Jagran International – new revenue for Jagran. 20 country reports published in past 3 years.
• Radio Mantra – operating only in the cities they have newspapers just for advertisers and the media mix, to bundle the offers.