ilevel Media, Marketing and Development

Day: 11 May 2012

  • Irish Newspaper Circulation April 2012

    April sees the some of the tabloids take a hammering. The Daily Star lost 3,000 copies month on month, but it’s not a one off. In many of the previous years they have had a heavy drop March to April mainly due to the upsurge in the March figure due to Cheltenham. The Sun (Sunday) lost over 5,000 purchasers month on month and they didn’t show up in anyone else’s figures.

    In general the month was good for most publishers with ten of the twelve morning titles showing an increase and six of the Sundays making gains. But still, month on month the market was down over 6,000 mainly due to the declines in The Sun (Sunday).

    The Sunday Times has to be singled out for attention increasing its circulation by nearly 2,000 on the previous month.  

    Year on Year is was not so bright with the market back 70,000 most of which was in the Sunday Market. Again, The Sun (Sunday) was the culprit here down nearly 40,000 on its previous incarnation of the NotW. The Mail on Sunday was off by nearly 8,000 on the previous year – again that’s mainly due to a large promotional month in April ’11. The Mirror and People are now back to their pre NotW closure figure.

    The morning tabloids are way off last year’s pace – combined they are down 17,000 on the year and the biggest faller being the Daily Star down 9,000.  

     

    Apr-12 Apr-11 Mar-12 Y on Y M on M
    Daily Mirror  57,610 61,036 57,290 -3,426 320
    Daily Record 613 724 616 -111 -3
    Irish Daily Star 75,728 85,192 78,818 -9,464 -3,090
    The Sun 73,750 78,143 72,783 -4,393 967
    Daily Express 2,962 3,025 2,812 -63 150
    Irish Daily Mail 52,651 50,205 51,964 2,446 687
    The Daily Telegraph 2,938 3,050 2,757 -112 181
    Financial Times 3,150 3,553 3,121 -403 29
    The Guardian 3,278 3,761 3,229 -483 49
    i 508 773 515 -258 -7
    The Independent 799 912 849 395 -50
    The Times 2,187 2,326 2,071 -139 116
    Morning Market 276,174 292,700 276,825 -16,011 -651
    Daily Star – Sunday 26,006 28,545 26,437 -2,539 -431
    The Sun/NotW 75,512 114,904 81,165 -39,392 -5,653
    Sunday Mail 1,126 1,633 1,206 -507 -80
    Sunday Mirror 40,837 40,705 42,414 132 -1,577
    The People 18,284 18,173 17,613 111 671
    Sunday Express 4,081 4,519 3,434 -438 647
    Sunday Post 730 788 694 -58 36
    The Mail on Sunday 108,563 116,336 110,082 -7,773 -1,519
    Independent on Sunday 1,280 1,338 1,305 -58 -25
    The Observer 6,432 7,639 6,385 -1,207 47
    The Sunday Telegraph 2,938 2,953 2,642 -15 296
    The Sunday Times 108,748 111,194 107,025 -2,446 1,723
    Sunday  Market 394,537 448,727 400,402 -54,190 -5,865
    Racing Post 6,320 6,551 7,049 -231 -729
    Total Market 677,830 747,978 684,276 -70,148 -6,446

     

     

     

  • Google Penguin Change

    Google Penguin Change

     

    In an interesting article yesterday in the Irish Independent, it noted how so many websites have been ‘hamstrung’ by the latest Google algorithm change, affectionately known as ‘penguin’. In this change the search engine specifically targeted websites that ‘gamed’ the engines in the past and got decent results on the back of it. The way they managed to get these inflated rankings was through a range of nefarious methods: Keyword spamming, backdoor pages, link spam – to mention but a few.

    penguinThe Google Webmaster Forum is now chock-a-block with website owners complaining that their sites have all but disappeared in the engines since the update. Why? Because their sites contravened Google’s quality guidelines and they were penalised for this. Do I shed a tear? No.

    If you are going to link spam, literally filling forums, and normally forums that have nothing to do with your industry/business, with links to your site using the exact same key phrase – then there is going to be some payback!

    And some news sites mention that it really only hit small businesses: then they are the people that have not being paying attention – or perhaps have let someone take over their ‘SEO’, in this case was simply link spamming!  

    You can get all the quality guidelines here or, make life easier for yourself and go through this pdf and assess your own site. It is genuinely no rocked science, its logic.             

  • Saturday Newspaper Sales

    The most recent editions of the ACB broke out the sales of the papers available in Ireland (bar the lazy ones) on a Monday to Friday and Saturday averages.

    It’s quite an interesting list of figures on many fronts. Most importantly, it shows that the Saturday Market, for the papers under scrutiny, is 36% stronger than the Monday-Friday market. If the M-F sale is 8% below the average, then there are going to be days between Monday and Friday that could only be classes as “tragic”.   

    The really interesting figures are how well the ‘quality’ UK papers of The Telegraph, Guardian and FT do at the weekend in Ireland, relative to the M-F sale naturally. Granted the FT do brand that particular edition as the Weekend FT, as opposed to the Saturday FT, and is still safe to be on the shelf on the Sabbath.

    The Guardian is an amazing figure rising from 2,300 to 7,300 at the weekend. It only re-affirms my theory that the Irish Newspaper buying public do like a bit of strange at the weekend.      

    Title M-F Sat Lift
    Daily Mirror  54,388 72,112 33%
    Daily Record 609 632 4%
    Irish Daily Star 65,334 87,649 34%
    The Sun 69,111 94,626 37%
    Daily Express 2,887 3,304 14%
    Irish Daily Mail 49,887 65,088 31%
    The Daily Telegraph 2,340 5,625 140%
    Financial Times 2,778 4,829 74%
    The Guardian 2,382 7,313 207%
    i 508
    The Independent 758 987 30%
    The Times 2,032 2,887 42%
    Morning Market 253,014 345,052 36%