Audiences are contributing an increasing share of the total global newspaper revenue, according to WAN-Ifra's annual World Press Trends survey.

Newspaper circulation revenue now represents 53 per cent of the overall industry revenue, underscoring the continuation of the trend identified last year: that audiences have become publishers' biggest source of revenue.

"We all talk of being consumer-centric. We all talk of having a constant eye on the future. Now is truly the time to do what we say," said chief executive Vincent Peyrègne at the World News Media Congress, World Editors Forum and World Advertising Forum in Cartagena, Colombia.

He announced the launch of the World News Media Outlook, a joint research project with the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Oxford that aims to provide news executives with intelligence to help benchmark their companies' performance and devise innovative strategies to ensure their businesses' future success. WAN-Ifra is calling for news media executives to participate in the study through an online survey at www.bit.ly/wnmo2016

"The outlook will be a very useful step on the way to a new approach of measuring and assessing the performance and priorities of leading news companies worldwide."

The World Press Trends survey includes data from more than 70 countries, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the global industry's value. The data is compiled by national newspaper and news media associations and through support from global data suppliers Zenith Optimedia, IPSOS, PwC, ComScore, the Pew Research Center and the ITU.

Peyrègne says WPT data shows that newspapers generated an estimated US$ 168 billion in circulation and advertising revenue in 2015. Ninety billion came from print and digital circulation, while US$78 billion came from advertising, the survey said.

Total global newspaper revenues fell 1.2 per cent in 2015 from a year earlier, and are down 4.3 per cent over the last five years. WAN-Ifra estimates of global industry revenue again include data on non-daily revenue, which is estimated at US$8 billion.

"Unfortunately, the way the industry measures value is still embedded in the old format-based methodology," he said. "The information on how much is earned from other, often new sources of revenue is lacking, despite the fact that they are becoming an important part of the revenue mix. WPT data indicates that in most mature newspaper markets additional revenue brings between seven and 20 per cent of overall revenue."

Global readership

More than 2.7 billion of adults are reading newspapers in print globally. Digital newspaper readership is growing, and in some of the most developed economies readership on all digital platforms has surpassed the number of readers in print. World Press Trends analysis estimates that at least 40 per cent of global Internet users read newspapers online.

The challenge for the industry remains the combined measurement of reach and influence of newspaper content on all platforms with new metrics.

The survey revealed:

For some publishers it's mobile-first, but some are already mobile-only

-- The worldwide smartphone market saw a total of 1.4 billion units shipped in 2015, making it the top year for shipments on record, with around 30 per cent of the world's population owning a smartphone today.

-- Mobile growth represents a huge opportunity for newspapers and other news brands. In the US, more than 80 per cent of people are engaged with newspaper digital content, and more than 70 per cent of Australians and Canadians read a newspaper via digital device. News brands reach 70 per cent of the UK population across online, tablet and mobile. According to the Newspaper Association of America, more than half of the US newspaper digital audience uses only mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) for their newspaper digital content.

-- According to ComScore, the top 10 digital media in the US have on average 37 per cent of their audience visiting only via mobile and another 31 per cent visiting via both mobile and desktop. In markets such as France, Germany, Japan, Australia and Canada, more than one third of the adult population use mobile to access news media content - and growth is rapid.

-- Desktop audience numbers continue to fall. Time spent using smartphones now exceeds web usage on computers in the US, Canada, the UK and Italy.

-- The growing number of smartphones and tablets is also boosting the use of data-intensive applications such as video, and Cisco is projecting a 66 per cent annual increase of mobile data usage by 2019. Among online 16-34s, almost 95 per cent watch video, and even among the oldest group tracked by the Global Web Index (the 55-64s), 8 out of 10 engage with video. Eight to 9 billion videos per day are watched on Facebook, 8 billion per day on Snapchat, 4 billion a day on Youtube.

-- App usage in the US represents 75 per cent of mobile engagement. The top five apps capture 88 percent of a user's app time, according to comScore. However, user time on smartphones is largely concentrated on social media platforms and entertainment brands.

-- According to comScore, several major traditional print publishers experienced online visitor gains of more than 20 per cent in 2015, led by the growth of mobile. The Washington Post had 78 per cent year-over-year audience growth, and Dow Jones & Company (publisher of The Wall Street Journal) had growth of 58 per cent.

Digital circulation revenues grow

-- Print unit circulation increased +4.9 percent globally in 2015 from a year earlier and shows a five-year growth of +21.6 percent. This is largely the result of circulation growth in India, China and elsewhere in Asia, as expanding literacy, economic growth, and low copy prices boost newspaper consumption. India and China together accounted for an astonishing 62 per cent of global average daily print unit circulation in 2015, up from 59 per cent in 2014.

-- Circulation rose +7.8 percent in Asia in 2015 from a year earlier; it fell -2.4 percent in North America, -2.7 percent in Latin America, -2.6 percent in the Middle East and Africa, -4.7 percent in Europe and -5.4 percent in Australia and Oceania. Over five years, newspaper print unit circulations rose +38.6 percent in Asia but fell elsewhere: -1.2 percent in the Middle East and Africa, -1.5 percent in Latin America, -10.9 percent in North America, -23.8 percent in Europe, and -22.3 percent in Australia and Oceania.

-- Paid digital circulation revenues continue to grow at double-digit rates, and have increased 30 percent in 2015 and 547 percent over five years. With revenues of more than US$ 3 billion, digital circulation is now starting to make up for lost print circulation revenues in many markets. Amongst online news users - as opposed to the entire population - about one in five pay for online news in the countries studied.

-- In the most advanced markets, especially regional and local ones, sales of print products are stabilizing as an important element of a larger product mix. Many successful print products are smaller, community- and interest-focused, and follow the needs and habits of various specific audiences.

Print still pays, while publishers diversify their products and revenue sources

-- As mentioned previously, in 2015 the industry made US$90 billion from print and digital circulation, while $78 billion came from print and digital advertising. Global newspaper market figures show that more than 92 percent of all newspaper revenues still come from print. The seven biggest newspaper markets are still the United States, Japan, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, India and Brazil, commanding more than half of global newspaper revenues and about 80 per cent of global daily unit circulation.

-- While digital advertising still represents a small part of overall newspaper revenue, the industry was hoping to grow it as a significant source of revenue in the future. However, its growth has declined to a CAGR of less than 10 percent. It increased by 7.3 percent in 2015 and 51 percent over five years, according to PwC Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2016-2020.

-- The main benefactors of digital ad spending continue to be social media and technology companies. Google takes the biggest share, US$67 billion, which includes Google Search and YouTube revenues. Google has recently introduced deep links for mobile apps, in order to make mobile content accessible during searches. Additionally, it is focusing on improving its revenues from YouTube's video display ads and its programmatic ad platform. In 2015, around $13 billion (80 percent of the total) of Facebook's advertising revenue came from mobile, with much of its recent growth coming from its native mobile apps. In China, Tencent and Baidu, the leading social platform and search engine respectively, contributed 56 percent of ad revenue growth among the major companies on the online market.

-- While total Internet advertising revenues reached US$170 billion in 2015, the full potential of the sector remains unfulfilled, as consumers turn to ad blocking to overcome their frustration with ads' impact on page loading times and data consumption. More positively, programmatic advertising has grown rapidly, with more than half of digital ads in mature markets now traded automatically - opening the way to better targeting of premium ads. While automated trading can definitely be a huge benefit for media owners, consumers and advertisers alike, this is another example where we as an industry need to inject qualitative measures into the algorithm: trust, context and design. Trading that continues to ignore these measures risks triggering purely short-term planning and buying decisions, which would ultimately damage brands and push prices down.

-- According to the latest report from PageFair, at least 419 million people (22 per cent of the world's 1.9 billion smartphone users) are blocking ads on the mobile web. Ad blocking on the mobile web grew by 90 per cent globally in 2015. Early adopters are now blocking ads on apps and walled-garden platforms such as Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, and Apple News as well.

"When it comes to ad blocking we have to face the fact that we have greatly contributed to the negative reputation of digital and mobile ads," Mr Peyrègne said. "But this crisis contains the seeds of an opportunity. The threat of ad blocking offers publishers a great chance to rethink their users' culture, enabling them to redefine how advertising performance and engagement really works and how we apply knowledge about our users to improve the product and the experience."

TV takes biggest bite of advertising, but internet and mobile gaining

-- According to data from Zenith Optimedia, television continues to maintain the largest share of global advertising revenues at just under 37 percent, followed by desktop and mobile internet with almost 30 percent, newspapers with 12.7 percent, magazines with 6.5 percent, outdoor and radio with around 7 percent, and cinema with 0.6 percent.

-- Print advertising worldwide declined -7.5 percent in 2015 and declined -24 percent over five years. Since it began in the mid-1990s, internet advertising (both desktop and mobile) has risen principally at the expense of print. Desktop and mobile Internet advertising grew 18.7 percent in 2015 and 102 percent over five years.

-- Print newspaper advertising increased in 2015 only in Latin America, at a modest rate of 0.3 percent, but fell in all other regions: -15.5 percent in Australia and Oceania, -9.7 percent in Asia and the Pacific, -7.2 percent in North America, and -6.2 percent in Europe.

Pictured: Charts from the WPT presentation show growth and change

On our homepage: WAN-Ifra chief executive Vincent Peyrègne presents the report