UK publisher Reach, owner of the Mirror, Daily Star and Daily Express, has seen its digital revenues grow for the first time since 2022. The group reported 6.7 percent YoY digital revenue growth during Q2 2024, signposting “early indicators” of recovery in the ad market.
However, the increase follows a challenging Q1, when digital revenues fell 8.5 percent YoY. That means for the first half of 2024, digital is still down 1.3 percent. And with print also down 6.1 percent over the six-month period, overall revenues fell 5.2 percent YoY during H1.
But the publishing group is seeing “momentum in its digital business”, highlighting a recovery in programmatic advertising. “Mass-scale programmatic advertising market has benefitted from a stabilisation in open market prices,” the company said in its earnings update. “It is too early to characterise this as a recovery, but the early indicators are positive.”
Trading up
The uptick comes as positive news during a tough period for publishers, many of whom cite reduced traffic from social media and search (predominantly Facebook and Google) as drains on their digital revenues. Reach’s page views were down 25 percent during the first half of the year, according to the company.
But Reach said the impact of reduced referral traffic was mitigated by its attempts to diversify digital revenues, including partnerships and e-commerce operations, as well as trading digital assets “more effectively”. These efforts resulted in a 32 percent YoY increase in yield (revenue per thousand page views). The company said leveraging its own first-party data enabled more targeted advertising, with data-driven revenues now making up 45 percent of digital revenues.
And in terms of content, the second quarter was “bolstered by strong multi-platform content around key events,” according to the company, including the Euros, the General Election, and of course Taylor Swift.
Reaching out
The election coverage included a video series running across multiple national and local titles, and the publisher is looking further to video to meet increasing demand for the format. Although the video business is “still in its early days”, Reach saw increased audience engagement with video content during H1. Overall video views were up 20 percent YoY, while TikTok views more than doubled, and YouTube revenues increased by 14 percent.
“For the time being, these represent a small part of our overall mix, but continue to be an important focus area for us to expand our reach by producing content for multiple platforms,” said the company.
The publisher added that AI will continue to play a greater role in its newsrooms. Earlier this year, the group introduced an AI tool enabling its journalists to repurpose its content for other websites in the Reach portfolio. The company estimates that its AI developments have also doubled the average speed for uploading a story into its Content Management System.