Mobile Retail and m-commerce.

Some interesting stats and facts have come to light this month – in this instance concerning the rise and rise of m-commerce. In a report conducted by Tamar (UK Based Research) suggest that 19% of consumers will do their festive shopping via a mobile handset in 2010. I’d hazard a guess that there are also a huge number of individuals that will conduct their primary research on a mobile but might leave the “last mile” to be concluded elsewhere for a variety of reasons (some set out below). Tesco in the UK expect 10% of their sales will come through

Adwords and Trademark infringement

An interesting digging match is ongoing in London over the use of trademarks and Google adwords. The case was taken by Interflora against M&S over their used of the trademark name “Interflora” as a keyword in their adwords campaign (CPC of the keyword is €0.63 here). The case even dragged Google in with Interflora looking to hit them in the suit as well. However the ruling stated that Google simply facilitated third parties and did not mean that Google itself was using the mark. The court ruled that a third party could be liable ‘in the case where the ad

Irish Newspaper Circulation October 2010

The mornings took a right hammering in October loosing 11k month on month mainly spurred on by the red tops. The Sun lost 5% of it’s circulation in a month, The Daily star not far behind it at 3.6%. Nobody seems to have picked up any of these falling sales. The Irish Daily Mail didn’t escape the carnage dropping 3.2%. All pretty bad news for the morning market. The Sundays also threw up a few casualties the most notable of which would be the News of the World back 4,400 in a month. It looks as if some of those

Irish Newspaper Circulation September 2010

September, brings a form of normality, if you’re a Circulation Manager anyway. That particular creature likes school, school runs and no summer holidays. Circulation people look with distain at tomes analysing the Chaos Theory. They just want calm and trends and straight line regression analysis. Month on month September does answer some of their prayers. The month on month lift in the Morning market was mainly carried by the Daily Mail. They were also the only paper to register a positive year on year (we don’t bother with analysing or speaking of the Daily Records numbers ever since they suddenly

Irish Newspaper Circulations August 2010

The Irish Daily Star took a bit of a bath last month, a period that should have brought some cheer to Terenure with the premier league and the tail end of the GAA. They dropped over 3,000 copies month on month. The Sunday Title, on the other hand, added 4,000 copies to address the balance in the daily market. The Daily Mirror had another good month and if one looks at their performance over the year they are up nearly 3,000 since January. And so is the Sunday edition. The News of the World cant be happy with another drop

Irish Newspaper Circulations Jan June 2010

And Finally…. The much awaited ‘Island Of Ireland Report finally made it to daylight. And its as expected, it’s unpleasant reading. Below are the topline for the main markets. The Sundays took the brunt of the blow, suffering a 61,000 decline from the period Jan-June ‘09 to Jan-June ‘10. To put that in context: that’s the single largest yearly drop looking back to 2000. The Mornings also lost out by 46,000 or 7%. And, again, a little bit of history there as its the largest percentage decline in the morning market since 2000. The Evenings? Should really be a “copy

Irish Sunday Newspaper Circulations Jan June 2010

The Sundays had mixed fortunes. For the papers that have their finger on the pulse and not elsewhere and who actually publish timely circulation numbers on a monthly basis, their plight is well documented. In the market four papers have circulations of under 10,000 and therefore throw up large percentage swings, so we’re not going to dwell on them too much on them. # The biggest fallers in the market were the Sunday Tribune (-11,327), the Sunday World (-10,374) and the Sunday Business Post (8,146). Perhaps theses papers are suffering from people dropping a second or, indeed a third paper

Irish Morning Newspaper Circulations Jan June 2010

In numerical terms not the same drop as the Sundays but in percentage terms is severe. Even looking back as far as the millennium you wont see the same percentage decline. The Tabloids, like the Sunday market have been in decline for many months – seeming feeling the effects of the ‘R’ worse than others. The Irish Times dropped 8% to 105,000, again for them it’s the single biggest y.o.y. decline since 2000 (only looking back that far). That has to be a bit worrying for Tara St given the investment they have made in the title of late. The

Irish Evening Newspaper Circulations Jan June 2010

It’s a waste of pixels, but it has to be done. Publication Jan June 2009 Jan June 2010 Diff ‘000 Diff % Evening Herald 71,187 67,657 -3,530 -5% Echo 24,192 22,288 -1,904 -8% Total 95,379 89,945 -5,434 -6% More of the same. The only item of note is with regard to the “Dubliner” wrapped up inside the Herald on a Thursday. Introduced in April, the paper’s circulation that month did increase – but that was down to bulks – or sampling – or whatever badge you want to stick on it. The following month the single copy sales were up

Irish Regional Newspaper Circulation Jan June 2010

The only reason I used the phrase ‘regional newspapers’ in the title was because that’s how the phrase will be. They should be called (rebranded) the less parochial “weekly” or “local newspapers”, but I digress. Because of the chopping an changing in this market, it’s difficult to get an exact handle on it. The only way is to compare “like with like” on the different years. So, like with like (ie the papers that were around in ‘08 and are still publishing a figure today) – the market is down 54,000 copies per week or 15%. Similarly, ‘09 to ‘10,

JNRS 2010

Released today, the JNRS for the period July – June 2010 show that readership of morning titles is down 86,000 compared to the same period 12 months prior and, conversely, the Sunday market in up 57k. The shift in the two markets could show a change of buying habits. Many may be abandoning the daily read in favour of reading a paper only on a Sunday. The survey showed that 56% of the population read a daily papers while some 70% read a Sunday paper. Individually there were differing results. In the Mornings, still retaining top slot is the Irish

Irish Newspaper Circulations July 2010

To begin on a positive note* not in the last 18 months have we seen such an increase in the morning market – up a hefty 7,700 copies. Albeit mainly on the back of the Daily Star – but still! The Sun picked up a bit as well and both tabloids could attribute the return of decent sporting events a welcome boost to their sales. Still, reflecting on the previous year, the three (four) tabloids are back nearly 20,000 copies. Turning to the Sunday market the obvious eye sour this month is the Mail on Sunday. Since the beginning of

Irish Newspaper Circulation June 2010

June Figures: normally a strange time for the media with schools drawing to a close, the leaving cert commencing and the annual holiday migration. The “hand of god” having dealt us a blow earlier in the year means that the World Cup would not drag up the circulations of any of the papers. Big fallers month on month were the Daily Star, Sunday Star, News of the World and the Sunday Times. It’s likely that respective newspaper proprietors are praying that this is just the ‘summer slump’ – but the same May to June difference was not as severe last

QR Codes again!

The Sunday Business Post ran adverts for Sherry FitzGerald last Sunday where the adverts carried QR codes. The codes, once read in an appropriate reader on a Smartphone, will link the advert to the sherry FitzGerald website. And fair enough, it’s a bit of innovation in an arena that slow to innovate. A follow-up article this week gave the impression that this was somewhat ‘cutting edge’. Whilst Sherry may have been the first to use the QR code in an advert, its far from cutting edge. Similarly, there was a story in the Irish Times in April extolling the virtues

Times OnLine Paywall

The Times stuck a paywall around their content yesterday 15th June. There will be huge interest in this paywall concept from a variety of sources: The News International Counting Dept (aka Finance). The bean counters and shareholders will be holding their breath the see what the up take will be and how the ‘markets’ react. They will have to make some sort of shareholders statement as to the uptake one would suggest as they opted out of the eABC last month and, therefore have no visible visitor numbers. The media, or the rest of the media to be accurate, is

Irish Newspaper Circulation May 2010

Perhaps, for certain publications, we may have been a tad hasty in the comments for April’s figures. Or indeed it may just show the fickle nature of the newspaper buying public. The morning market was up marginally mainly due to the tabloids. The end of the Premiership, start of the GAA and the playoffs for the Heineken Cup all contributing to the copy sales. But they are no where near their levels from 2009 with the market down nearly 28,000. The Sunday market: many of the copies found by the News of the World last month drifted away this month

Irish Newspaper Circulation July 2010

Newspaper Readership Figures JNRS 2009

Hot on the back of the circulation figures come the 2009 JNRS Readership Figures. Belying the some of the myths – 87% of the Irish Adult population still read a paper every day (that’s a physical one for any cynics). The largest read paper in Ireland is The Sunday Independent with a reach just short of 30%. A huge number when you consider that across the pond in the UK the reach of the highest read Sunday Paper is the News Of The World at (only) 15%. It’s shadowed by the Sunday World which is still more than 100,000 readers

Regional Newspaper Promotion

It’s particularly refreshing to see a media group being collectively proactive but alas, not on this Island. All media are going through a torrid time, but some more torrid than others. A case in point would be the ‘Regional’ newspapers who have never really been flavour of the month with agencies and press buyers alike anyway and even less favoured in recessionary times. Visions of a somewhat parochial and staid medium may be the cause of that, coupled with a body that is less than cohesive and certainly not boisterous when it comes to selling itself. Individually, there are many

Newspaper Circulations February ‘10

Comparing month on month is a bit of ‘smoke and mirrors’. January is such a dead month for newspaper sales, using it can be a poor comparison. Since we are in February – we have no choice. Taking that into account, there were some positives. The Sun bounced back with an extra 2,300 copies on the previous month and seemingly not at the expense of any of the other tabloids. Other than that, the status quo was maintained in the mornings. The Mail on Sunday had a great month adding over 4,000 and the News of the World added a

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