Alice makes her presence felt with a letter in Media Week

November 17, 2008

Despite better figures from the Guardian, Times and FT in September (Media Week, 10^th Oct), there is no hiding from the fact that all dailies are showing circulation losses year on year despite all sorts of strategies ranging from cover price reductions, full colour printing and editorial cuts.

 

Yet from our perspective, as off-the-page display specialists, media owners must not lose faith in print titles and should continue to invest in the medium.  Why?  Newspapers are delivering an audience demographic that online can barely dream of, mainly 38+ individuals who have far reaching disposable income.  With general advertising response levels down significantly, newspapers are holding up well because of this. Online, by contrast, is suffering because of its young debt-laden audience.

 

Yes, we’ve got to work harder and smarter in order to make off-the-page response advertising work.  But there’s no question that print national dailies are essential to both us and our clients, who basically use the nationals as their shop frontage.  For that reason, I couldn’t agree more with the Guardian’s Adam Freeman, who recently said: “I don’t see a future without print display. We still believe we will be selling many more papers for many years to come.” He’s right.