Insight Analysis: Top UK Readers Lead Euro Media Survey
One of the key political battlegrounds in the approach to the 7 June general election has been the extent to which the UK should be in (and indeed out of) Europe. Whilst a number of committed EU nations are saying goodbye to their old coins and notes and beginning to embrace the Euro, the UK remains at best tentative at relinquishing its financial sovereignty. In the pan-European media world, though, it seems the UK’s movers and shakers are definitely leading the way.
The survey specifically targets the main income earners of the top 20% of households in each country. The 40 million people in this category are of interest to many of the largest advertisers, says EMS, and account for the larger part of the market value of products like cars and travel. The group also contains the audience of the international and national quality media, under the spotlight here, as well as those key to the purchasing decisions of businesses.
A look at a broad selection of press titles, available across the continent, shows that these upmarket readers in the UK are more avid consumers of a wider range of newspapers and magazines than is true of the European average for the same group. From the International Herald Tribune to Vogue and National Geographic to Institutional Investor, the percentage of this top 20% reading these titles across the year is much higher for the UK than the European average.
Not surprisingly, the Financial Times is more popular in the UK than anywhere else, with 49.8% of those surveyed reading the paper at some point during the year; the readership drops to 39.7% in Ireland and was 25.5% in Switzerland. The IHT takes 12.8% readership in the UK, as against 9.4% across the continent; USA Today takes 16.6%, as against 8.3%. Of the women’s glossies, only Elle has a lower than average readership here – 14.0% compared to Europe’s 15.6%.
In fact it is only the French titles L’Express, Le Point and Paris Match, along with EuroBusiness, that have broader reach across Europe as a whole than in the UK.