Over 50% of Guardian Media Group (GMG)’s revenue now comes via digital channels, offsetting declines in newsstand sales and print advertising revenues.
A combination of digital reader revenues and a good performance in digital advertising has brought in a total of £108.6m in digital revenue for GMG this year, an increase of 15% on last year. The company’s total revenue is now £217m, up 1% on 2017.
Guardian News and Media (GNM), GMG’s core offering, saw a record digital reach on theguardian.com, with 155m monthly unique browsers (up from 140m last year) and over 1 billion page views per month.
Reader revenues represents more than half of GMG’s total revenues, a combination of digital and print sales. As of 30 June 2018, GNM has 570,000 regular supporters and has received an additional 375,000 one-off contributions in the past 12 months.
GMG is now into the second year of its three year cost-saving plan, the main financial target of which is for GNM to break even by April 2019.
According to Tuesday’s financial report GNM remains on track, having reduced its operating losses by two-thirds from £57m to £19m. GMG has also reduced its costs by 7%, to a total of £240m.
Commenting on the results, David Pemsel, Guardian Media Group’s chief executive officer said: “In 2016 we set out a three year strategy based on building deeper reader relationships and getting GNM’s finances to break even at operational level, in order to bring the organisation as a whole back to sustainability.
“The global media sector continues to face challenging conditions, but our strategy is on track to achieve our target and secure the future of the Guardian.
“We have grown our revenues for a second consecutive year and more people are paying for Guardian journalism than ever before. Thanks to the hard work of everyone at GMG, we are building a strong foundation in order to invest in some of the most trusted journalism in the world.”
