‘World Press Trends 2017’ hints trust is new currency for success

Two years ago it was just one of those watershed moments. A fundamental shift in the newspaper business model took place: reader revenue became the biggest source of revenue for news publishers. Not surprisingly, this year’s findings in WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends 2017 bear out that growing trend, as news publishers continue a concerted effort to build loyal audiences around their high-quality journalism. What underpinned the trend in 2016 is surprising: the trust issue. This year ‘World Press Trends 2017’ is structured into three themes, starting with the obvious, trust, followed by ‘from reach to relationships’ and ‘advertising rebooted’, with annual survey includes data from more than 70 countries, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global industry’s value.

Some of the findings to consider are that 56 percent of newspapers’ overall revenue came from circulation sales (print and digital) in 2016. Global digital circulation revenues grew by 28 percent (YoY), and a full 300 percent from 2012- 2016, with the trend expected to continue. Reader revenue now makes up about 30 percent of total digital revenue. Despite that, total global newspaper revenues fell 2.1 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, and are down 7.8 percent over the last five years. Print still makes up the vast majority of that audience revenue, and continues to grow – up by over three percent over the past five years.