As the Sunday newspaper world is turned upside down, The British Population Survey (BPS) has been looking at the profile of the NoTW readership and where they are likely to go next for their Sunday reading.
With a radical sea-change in the supply of Sunday Newspapers this weekend, the BPS looked at the ‘orphan readership’: who they are, what they might turn to for the foreseeable future, and whether they are worth pursuing by either Other Title Publishers, or Advertisers / Media Buyers ?
Looking at the January to June 2011 data (42,553 respondents), the survey shows some key facts from the Reader Profile for The News of the World.
The predominance of ‘Family’ lifestages’, and the C2-D-E market segment is evident. This is probably not a surprise to anyone, but it does serve as a well-defined reminder to set the scene for the rest of the information.
In the next two charts we can see the Daily Titles read by NOTW readers, and the other Sunday Titles also read by them. No surprises again that almost 63% read The Sun, or that the Daily Mirror comes second right down at 14.17%.
It may be tempting to see this as an indicator of virtually instant success for a ‘Sun on Sunday’, but maybe we need to wait and see whether there are any signs of Reader backlash against the other NI titles and particularly the Sun, in view of the strong cross-readership.
The other Sundays read by NoTW readers are perhaps equally intuitive, but have the potential to shed some light on where we might see circulation increases in the short term.
However, the questions that arise for the Marketing Industry are :-
Where will the readership go? Is it going to be worth pursuing them?
Here we can concentrate on looking at that segment of the population who are “Prepared to Respond in Future to Adverts or Leaflets in Newspapers”.
Looking at this segment as a whole, it has been possible to connect to a slightly larger proportion of them through the NOTW than through any other Sunday Title – but this is simply a natural result of the fact that the NOTW was the largest circulation Sunday Title by some distance.
However, if we look at the percentage of each Readership who are “Prepared to Respond in Future to Adverts or Leaflets in Newspapers” we can see that the Readership Profile (above) of the NOTW renders them a less responsive audience than the current readerships of The People, the Observer, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Express, The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Mirror.
The key question to be asked, therefore, is whether, by attracting the ‘orphan readership’ in the short term, other Sunday Titles will be simply reducing their current Response Potential, and possibly reducing their Advertisers’ ROI measured against OTS?
It also begs the question as to what is going to happen to the Readership Profiles of all the other Sunday Titles. Up to date detailed readership profiles adjusted month by month are going to become more essential than ever.
Source: www.thebps.co.uk/
