Feature: Sunday Newspapers Continue To Prove Fertile Ground For High Income Advertisers

A report last week showed that Sunday newspapers have enjoyed a 10% increase in total advertising revenue over the past year, with broadsheet Sunday Business increasing from £1.5m to £2.5m, or 61%, and both the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph registering a year on year increase of 16% (see Ad Revenues Up For Sunday Newspapers).

While NRS figures show declining readership of national newspapers, figures from ACNielsenMMS show that in the Sunday papers, both the low earners like Sunday Business and the high revenue titles such as Mail on Sunday, which increased by 14% to reach the largest total of all the titles at £120m, are experiencing growth.

Advertisers still trust newspapers for their campaigns, it seems, despite the downward slide in reader numbers which shows no sign of abating. The latest NRS figures for the six month period ending June 2000 show a year-on-year decrease of 5.1%, with the majority of titles losing readers (see National Newspaper NRS Round-Up – June 2000).

Amongst the Sundays the worst hit was the Sunday People, which slipped 10.4% in a year on year analysis to the end of June 2000. The Sunday Telegraph, one of the highest climbers in terms of revenue, lost 9.7% of its readers and the Sunday Times lost 106,000 – or 3% – of its readers during the period.

A rise in the price of television slots could contribute to the increased adspend across Sunday newspapers. But the highly targeted Sundays are still proving fertile ground for ad campaigns, particularly those targeting higher income brackets.

The audience for the majority of Sunday newspapers comes from the ABC1 categories. Over 80% of the total readers of Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Observer and Independent On Sunday fall into the higher income categories, and only three of the larger Sunday titles have ABC1 audiences of less than 50%

In terms of age, there is a more even distribution across the Sunday titles. Of the top five titles in terms of revenue, Sunday Express, Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday have a slightly older bias. A total 65% of Sunday Express readers are over 45; 61% of Sunday Telegraph‘s audience is in the upper age bracket, and 56% of the Mail on Sunday‘s audience falls into this category. The Independent on Sunday and the News of the World are younger-leaning titles with 63% and 61% of their readers under 45, while 55% of the audiences for both the Observer and the Times are under 45.

Not surprisingly the biggest advertisers across the Sunday nationals are those targeting the higher income categories. Finance and motors were the top two categories of adspend last year, with Renault the highest spender overall. In total Sunday newspapers took £408 million for the year ending April 2000.