Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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Except Germany, all countries witness a decline in print advertising income. The US, the UK 
and Japan are most affected. It is not immediately clear how to explain the exceptional trend 
in Germany, apart from the fact that Germany is known for its relatively strong newspaper 
publishing market where readership has proven relatively loyal and resilient against price 
increases (Esser & Brüggemann, 2010) 
Table 7 shows the share of advertisement spending in different media channels. Compared to 
other media sectors, the printed newspaper sector lost the largest share of total worldwide ad 
spend by medium over the years. Although the market shares in Table 7 are (at least for the 
newspaper sector) a bit more positive than WAN-IFRA shares presented in Table 8, it clearly 
shows the shifts in share of worldwide advertising expenditures between 2006 and 2009. 
While newspapers (-14.9%), magazines (-9.6%) and radio (-7.9%) show a significant decline, 
television was largely able to retain its market share in advertising. Between 2006 and 2009, 
television lost a half per cent of market share. Outdoor advertising has gained 6.1% of market 
share between 2006 and 2009. The internet is responsible for the largest increase in 
worldwide ad spend. Between 2006 and 2009, the share of advertising expenditure on the 
internet has increased with almost 43%. In 2009 it ranks third with 11.9% of total advertising 
spend, after TV and newspapers and was predicted to grow to 13.6% in 2010 (Zenith 
Optimedia, 2009). 
Table 7: Share of total worldwide ad spend by medium 2006-2010 (%)
2006 
2007 
2008 
2009 
2010 
Average growth 2006-2009 (%) 
Newspapers 28.4 
27.2 25.9 24.7 23.7 -14.9 
Magazines 
12.5 12.1 11.6 11.4 11.0 -9.6 
Television 37.3 
37.3 37.6 37.4 37.1 -0.5 
Radio 
8.2 8.0 7.8 7.6 7.4 -7.9 
Cinema 
0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 20 
Outdoor 
6.2 6.2 6.4 6.6 6.7 6.1 
Internet 
6.8 8.6 10.2 11.9 13.6 42.9 
Source: Zenith Optimedia, 2009. 
Theoretically, newspaper publishers could be able to compensate for their loss in advertising 
income by increased advertising income from their digital outlets. However, so far this does 
not seem to have been the case. Table 8 shows how advertising income within the global 
newspaper publishing sector is divided between advertising in the newspapers’ print and 
online editions. Again the figures show an decline in print advertising and an increase in 
digital advertising, except in 2009 when digital advertising income decreased as well. It is 
also clear that the losses in print advertising are far bigger than the gains in digital advertising, 
leading to an overall negative growth in advertising income for newspaper publishers.