Media agency spend in printed newspapers has dropped by a fifth in the past year, seriously impacting on the bottom line of the nation’s newspaper publishers, as the uptake in digital advertising fails toget anywhere near the print loss.

Agency spending on print newspaper advertising was down the most in the big city papers it 21.3 per cent, the national papers suffered a 19.3 per cent cut while the regional papers fared little better, they saw media agencies cut their spend by 17.7 per cent.

Overall the newspapers lost $188.9m in agency spend last year, but only increased their digital advertising sales by $14.8m. This effectively means that the newspaper industry saw $164.5m in advertising walk out of the door, and for every dollar lost in print advertising newspapers newspapers are only getting back 8 cents in digital spend.

The dismal figures provide confirmation of the major PricewaterhouseCoopers report that came out last month predicting a continued downturn in newspaper advertising.

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