Rising advertising revenues boost DMGT

Published on Wednesday 28 March 2007 11:45

NEWSPAPER publisher Daily Mail and General Trust has hailed a strong start to its financial year and predicted a good half-year performance.

The publisher of the Daily Mail said its national newspapers had seen a ten per cent rise in its advertising revenues, while falling sales at its regional unit had been offset by cost reductions.

This comes as a report claims that online advertising spending has overtaken that of newspapers for the first time. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) said that online spending by advertisers had rocketed through the 2 billion barrier, up 41 per cent on last year and now worth 11.4 per cent of all advertising spending.

It added that display advertising revenues were up four per cent in the five months to February, although classified advertising dropped eight per cent.

The company said that both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday were outperforming the rest of the newspaper market, although it added it could not predict future performance in advertising because of the short-term nature of the current market.

The firm said: "This six-month performance will benefit from acquisitions and will show stronger growth than we expect to achieve for the full year."

The IAB said the growth of user-generated content like video-sharing had also been seized upon by advertisers and has helped make online the second biggest ad market in the UK, behind television.