‘Free’ Evening Standard improves readership
To distinguish itself from free afternoon dailies London Lite and the londonpaper the only remaining paid London evening paper Evening Standard is trying to convince advertisers that their readership is more mature, more affluent and more influential than that of the freesheets. The Evening Standard is therefore a better buy for advertising agencies.
According to the Guardian “the paper is touring the agencies claiming it is read by more people in the AB socio-economic group than any other daily quality newspaper, including the Financial Times, and that 63% of its 712,000 readers do not read another quality daily. (…) The Standard is telling agencies that it is reaching an audience of “influentials”, which last year collectively spent £330m on new cars, £754m on their last holiday and £603m on communications.”
More mature means ‘older’ in regular English and probably true - and as older people usually are wealthier than young people also this might be true. Whether they spend more is still a question to be answered. Evening Standard’s readers could also be more influential but if this a better audience for advertisers remains to be seen.
The problem with Evening Standards data, however, is that they are not from the National Readership Survey but from the Evening Standard itself.
The Guardian article contained interesting information on circulation of the Evening Standard. They seem to get to this new influential audience by distributed more free ‘bulk’ copies than ever. In January 2008 more than a third (34%) of its circulation, 99,000 copies, consisted of free bulk copies while the full price circulation was 195,000. According to ABC data in February 100,000 copies (35%) were given away for free, mostly in first-class trains and to business-class airlines. Full price circulation was down to 187,000.