The Reuters Digital News Report shares insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 93,000 online news consumers in 46 markets. Online news consumption has fallen down worldwide as trust in digital media has fallen back, and digital news fatigue has set in. The Covid-19 pandemic had earlier accelerated the move towards a more digital and mobile media environment.
According to a recent report on print advertising in India by market research firm statista, newspaper advertising in India was at US$ 2.24 billion (approximately Rs 18,503 crore), significantly closer to prepandemic levels of US$ 2.73 billion (approximately Rs 22,551 crore) after falling down to US$ 1.93 billion (approximately Rs 15,942 crore) and
US$ 2.14 billion (approximately Rs 17,677) in the calendar years 2020 and 2021, respectively. Print ad revenues are predicted to rise to US$ 2.31 (approximately Rs 19,082 crore) in the year 2023. Magazine advertising spends, on the other hand, decreased from US$ 0.09 billion (approximately Rs 743 crore) in 2019 to US$ 0.06 billion(approximately Rs 495 crore) in 2022. However, magazine ad revenues are expected to stay constant at US$ 0.06 billion (approximately Rs 495 crore) in 2023.
In another article in exchange4media, Mohit Jain, president of the Indian Newspaper
Society (INS) and BCCL board member expressed his views on the popularity of print among advertisers, “There is a lot of clutter online, with constant pop-ups, notifications, and other distractions, and a lot of brands, especially emerging ones which don’t have brand recognition yet, can get lost in the crowd. This is where print emerges as a good option. Not only can your brand stand out, but its ads in newspapers have more impact on the public at large.”
“There is always a churn in the composition of advertising. Print media is managing this churn quite well currently and keeps adding newer categories and clients to it, including popular social media platforms. Print advertising provides a massive reach, immediacy, and a big impact in a credible manner. Print is not fragmented and is the simplest way of reaching audiences at the state or city level due to its hyper-local nature,” argues DB Corp promoter and director Girish Agarwal.
In the INMA South Asia News Media webinar on 11 August 2022, Dolly Jha of Neilsen showed the old surveys (because new surveys were not available then) – apart from one
smaller recent survey that her company did – that demonstrated the power of print. “Publishers must lever the power of print in driving trust,” she asserted, showing data in
which – “Print is actually coming out loud and tall on trust in research and the empirical data reinforces the positives,” as reported in this publication.
She suggested print needs to rebuild its connect with the ecosystem with an advisory council meeting with advertisers once every four months, or at least once in six months. “Don’t shy away from measurement,” she said, urging the news publishers to revive the preCovid-19 measurement research. Since then, the ABC survey for January to June 2022 has become available, although some media planners seem unaware of this. As Dolly Jha stated, the Indian news industry must keep investing in better research to leverage the power of print driving trust.
