National newspapers launch £3m ad campaign

The UK’s six leading national newspaper groups are joining forces to launch a £3 million ad campaign across their 18 titles, as they look to remind people of the unique role newspapers play for advertisers, readers and society as a whole.

Running for 8 weeks from 2 September, the campaign, which will run across both print and digital, will aim to highlight the level of attention and influence that newsbrands still have in an increasingly connected world.

While newspapers continue to see declines in print circulation, with the whole national market down -7.2% year on year, 36 million people still pick up a paper each month and spend more than an hour on average reading it.

The latest NRS PADD results, however, highlight the increasingly significant role that mobile and tablet devices play for newsbrands, with mobile and tablet readership overshadowing print and PC for a large number of titles.

Of the titles impacted the most in terms of how much mobile adds to print and PC readership, the Independent leads with 134%, followed by the Daily Record (115%), Daily Mirror (114.7%), Daily Express (106.6%), Guardian (103.2%) and Daily Telegraph (98.7%).

Of the newsbrands measured, freebies Metro and London Evening Standard, and the Sun and The Times, which sit behind a paywall, are the only ones in which print is the dominant medium.

However, while digital revenues and audiences continue to grow for publishers, newspapers remain the biggest source of ad revenue, with advertisers spending £1.37 billion in national newsbrands last year, according to the latest AA/Warc figures, including £214 million on digital platforms.

“Technology and the arrival of tech organisations has transformed the way all of us find information, which means the important role newspaper brands play can sometimes be overlooked,” said Rufus Olins, chief executive of Newsworks, the marketing body for the newspaper industry.

“We felt it was time to remind people about the job they do and extraordinary influence they have over people’s opinions and decision-making.”

The campaign will appear in the Guardian, The Observer, Independent, Independent on Sunday, i, London Evening Standard, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, The Sun, Sun on Sunday, The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Metro.