Österreich: free & cheap (coffee)
A yearly subscription to Austrian tabloid Österreich (see also previous post) costs €142,80. For 45 cents a day the paper is home delivered six days a week. For €35 the paper throws in a coffee machine as well.
Almost half of these 45 cents probably goes to distribution itself – leaving 25 at most for paper, transport, staff, housing and overhead. With a paid circulation of around 140,000 this cannot cover the costs of the paper.
As advertising should make up for the greater part of the costs, the business model is mysterious. The issue I picked up in Vienna yesterday had less than 4 pages paid advertising in the 40 page paper. The free magazine Life & Style (16 pages) had virtually no paid advertising. There was however a 16-page insert by electronics retailer Saturn in the paper.
But also paid papers Die Presse and Der Standard were not overflown with advertising. Only market leader Kronen Zeitung had substantial advertising.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Dear Piet,
thanks – your site is great and very interesting – I will reference to it!
I cannot say anything about Österreich – the project is very interesting for Austria(n media industry), too.
Market entry of Österreich did not take anything from “our piece of the ad pie” – quite the contrary: we had and still do have considerable increases in ad sales since years. Perhaps the markets (we are an upmarket paper) and the approaches are too different. ;-)
Best,
Rainer
Managing Director of DIE PRESSE