Print ad sales fell more than 10 per cent last month as advertisers continue to switch to other mediums or even their own channels.
Newspaper bookings were down almost 13 per cent on the same time last year to $70m, with News Corp and Fairfax suffering falls of 16 per cent and 4.2 per cent respectively, while magazines dropped 12 per cent to $24m.
The falls for printed publications are several times the overall drop in total Australian advertising sales, which fell 3.2 per cent to $694m, according to The Standard Media Index (SMI). TV was down only five per cent and while radio actually jumped nine per cent.
Outdoor is the only printed sector that appears to be doing well, with OMA figures saying the industry is on track for another record year, but digital is eating into print’s market share there too, with APN just announcing it is looking to switch up to a quarter of its inventory to digital.
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The poor results for print come as brand and ad agency speakers warned at last week’s Publish conference in Sydney that relentless cost cutting at Australian publishing titles could damage their quality and hit advertising revenues even harder.
Karin Upton Baker, managing director of luxury clothing and accessories brand Hermes Australia, said in a panel discussion that budget cuts at publications are a major concern for her company.
“We are looking at people who are producing print magazines and doing it on smaller and smaller amount of money. And while I am not advocating waste, we know that to create an exceptional, creative outstanding environment requires money,” she says.
“If we see the quality of these heritage titles slipping that is a particular danger zone and I do not think it’s something publishers are thinking about.
“The product and creativity is what the publisher is selling to us and that includes the people they are employing on the publication, their level of knowledge and expertise and whether they are getting the facts right or wrong.”
UM chief executive Mat Baxter says 45 per cent of the big media agency’s revenue is now from non-core media, down from 80-90 per cent a few years ago.
“The pendulum is swinging and clients get it,” he says.
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Baxter also says advertisers are increasingly investing into their own platforms instead of spending their marketing budgets on paid media.
“Clients are taking money from their marketing budget and redirecting it from paid media to manage their communities on social platforms, investing in new technology, trialling new things, investing in website experience, all the things they control,” he says.
“If you are in the paid media space you have to got to start to diversify. Agencies are doing this and publishers need to become experts at creating new platforms internally.
“They need to become an architect of building those things with clients. If you do that you’ll find your revenue opportunities will expand.”
Group M chief investment and intelligence officer Danny Bass says publishers must become better at selling the benefits of print to a younger, digital-focused generation of media buyers.
“This is the first generation that will probably never buy a magazine, and who have never bought a newspaper,” he says.
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