Newspapers see revenues decline amid advertising market expansion

Newspapers have seen their share of advertising revenues fall in the first half of the year, despite a general expansion of the advertising market. A total of zl.4.54 billion was spent by advertisers in the first half of the year, zl.1.1 billion more than in the same period of last year. However, the share of the revenue enjoyed by daily newspapers fell, from 14.35% to 11.55%. This decline in income, coupled with a dwindling readership, has caused the publishers of daily newspapers to optimize their costs. One method being increasingly adopted is merger. Experts suggest that in the case of local dailies, there is not the market for three or four titles offering the same news and exploiting the same limited sources of advertising revenue. The first significant newspaper merger took place in 1997, when Polskapresse, owner of Gazeta Krakowska, bought out Echo Krakowa and transformed it into a supplement. (Prawo i Gospodarka, p. 2) M.M.