By IANS
Toronto : Canadian daily newspapers registered a record 29 percent growth in online advertising revenue in 2007, offsetting a small decline in printing advertising revenue during the period.
According to a report released by the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA) Monday, the newspaper industry notched up a total ad revenue of Canadian $3.576 billion last year.
This was about 0.8 percent lower than the figures for 2006, showing that the Canadian newspaper industry was not much affected by global trends of falling circulations and ad revenues.
Outlining a marginal decline in print ad revenues and circulation sales of Canadian dailies, the report said print advertising showed a small decline of 2.4 percent.
Circulation sales were also down slightly, to $808.9 million, a drop of 1.2 percent over 2006, a year in which circulation sales posted a 3.8 percent gain.
But this decline was offset by over 29 percent growth in online ad revenue.
The report said the Canadian newspaper industry stood out in sharp contrast with its US counterpart, where a contracting economy pushed print ad revenues to the biggest year over year fall in more than half a century.
“This picture contrasts markedly with the performance of the US newspaper industry, where total print advertising revenues in 2007 fell 9.4 percent to $42 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), the biggest year-over-year decline since 1950, when the NAA first began charting the numbers,” the report said.
The NAA reported only 18.8 percent growth in online revenue in 2007, down from 31.4 percent in 2006.
“The narrative about newspapers in the US has been consistently negative in recent years, and that negativity has unduly influenced perceptions of the health of the newspaper industry in Canada,” the report quoted CNA president Anne Kothawala as saying.
“Advertisers and their agencies, many of whom are global businesses, should ensure that their Canadian buying decisions are not tainted by the US data.
“In an age when consumers are increasingly tuning out advertising content, studies show they continue to find newspapers engaging. Many readers turn to their paper as much for the ad content as the editorial content.
“The real story is how well we are holding our own in an age of global media disruption,” Kothawala added.