APN Titles clear leaders in readership stakes

News Release – Embargoed until midday Friday 14 August 2009

APN Titles clear leaders in readership stakes

The number of consumers choosing The New Zealand Herald and its companion website, nzherald.co.nz, as their primary source of news and entertainment continues to grow.

This is confirmed by the latest newspaper readership survey and the net ratings score for news web sites, both collated by the Nielsen company.

APN maintained its dominant position with The Herald and the New Zealand Women’s Weekly continuing to lead the newspaper and mass market magazine readership.

The Herald’s newspaper readership remains stable with the newspaper confirmed as the country’s best read daily and highest selling newspaper overall in a market impacted by challenging economic conditions.

Brand audience growing

Total online and offline audience of the Herald brand has continued to grow, underlying its great strength.

On a typical day 672,000 New Zealanders will read Herald content in print or online, and over a week brand audience grows to 1,130,000 people. The number of New Zealanders visiting the Herald website each day has grown by 33% over the last 12 months. This contrasts international trends in newspaper and on-line readership and demonstrates the connection and power of the Herald brand.

Advertisers can now access daily brand audience numbers as part of the Nielsen survey. The following table compares the Herald brand audience with the comparable measurement for the newspaper and online audiences in the Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin areas

Table 1. Aggregated Audience Measurement Publication Print AIS Daily

NZ Herald / nzherald.co.nz 573 194 - 672 Stuff.co.nz - 165 - Dominion Post / dompost.co.nz/ stuff central region 248 28 77 294 The Press / thepresss.co.nz / stuff southern region 220 20 42 253 Otago Daily Times / odt.co.nz 105 12 – 113

Combined other metro newspapers / websites 635

The Herald’s daily audience is significantly higher than the combined audience of all other metropolitan newspapers and their websites (including Stuff).

The leadership position of The New Zealand Herald, measured by Nielsen readership survey data, is reinforced by Nielsen Net Ratings for the Herald’s website audience. In the second quarter of 2009 the Herald’s average weekly domestic web audience grew by 33% to 551,000 on the same quarter in 2008. Over the same period weekly traffic increased 37% to 11.50 million page impressions.

Best Read Daily and Weekend Newspapers

The Herald recorded an average daily readership of 573,000 readers, more than twice as many of any other daily newspaper in New Zealand. The Weekend Herald is New Zealand’s best read newspaper with 613,000 readers, closely followed by the papers Wednesday edition recording 598,000 readers.

Strong readership results were recorded for Weekend Herald magazine, canvas, increasing by 20,000 readers to 417,000 and the Friday Business Herald reaching 356,000 readers, or four times the readers of the National Business Review. The success of the Herald’s business section has been outstanding with readership of the section growing by an average 25,000 readers every day of the week.

Sales of the Herald in the latest ABC circulation audit were 174,000 a day, down 6.8 per cent on a year ago. This was principally due to lower marketing activity and a reduction in the Herald’s educational program, prompted by a need for economies in the current market. The paper remains the highest selling newspaper in New Zealand.

Herald on Sunday rules the North

The Herald on Sunday has also reinforced its position as the leading Sunday newspaper in the Northern region and important Auckland market. Nielsen measures the papers readership at 372,000 slightly up (0.3%) on the same period last year. In the Northern Region the Herald on Sunday has 43,000 more readers than the Sunday Star Times and 139,000 more readers than the Sunday News.

ABC circulation results for the 6 months ending June 2009 give the Herald on Sunday sales of 92,315, just 1.4% down on the same period last year. This makes the newspaper the third largest selling paper in New Zealand behind only the Herald and the nationally distributed Sunday Star Times.

New Zealand Woman’s Weekly leads

The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly has increased its leadership of the weekly magazine category recording a readership of 846,000. The Weekly now has 79,000 more readers than any other weekly magazine.

The New Zealand Listener has recorded a readership of 280,000, and continues to be New Zealand’s best selling current affairs title with an audited circulation of 64,690, double that of its nearest competitor. Popular teen title Creme has once again achieved both significant readership growth, increasing year on year by 12% to 163,000, and circulation growth of 10.8%. Its new circulation of 20,901 cements its position as the best selling title in the teen market.

Publishing brands holding strong

Chief Executive Martin Simons said that while the market remained challenging, revenue trends were beginning to strengthen, particularly in display advertising categories. “The readership and circulation results released today demonstrate the strength of the APN publishing portfolio, as our market leading publications continue to hold their dominant position ”

Readership results, released by Nielsen Media Research today, measure the readership of print publications for the 12 month period from July 2008 and June 2009. Circulation (newspaper sales) data also released is measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulation and covers the 6 months ending 30 June 09.

ends

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