The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Sun on Sunday ad spend down 25% on News of the World

Author

By John Glenday, Reporter

May 21, 2012 | 2 min read

The Sun on Sunday is failing to shine as brightly on advertisers as its News of the World predecessor, with Nielsen indicating that its ad spend is down almost 25% or £10m compared to the scrapped title.

In the 10 weeks to May 6 the Sunday Sun took £4.6m in ad revenue, compared to the nearly £8m the News off the World made over the same period last year – a near 40% decline.

Analysts project that the Sunday edition of the Sun is within a whisker of falling under the psychologically significant 2m circulation level, noting that it recently came within just 70,000 copies of that figure on Easter Sunday.

This follows week on week sales declines of as many as 166,000 copies, much greater than rivals which dipped by between 0.5% and 2%, although this was exaggerated by a successful Morrison’s promotion the week before.

Nevertheless The Sun remains Sundays market leader with 2.13m sales – albeit far below its launch sales figure of 3.2m. This is around 355,000 more than its nearest competitor, the Mail on Sunday.

Paul Hayes, managing director at News International's commercial operation, said: “Ten weeks in and the Sun on Sunday is continuing its success story with both readers and advertisers backing the Sunday edition. In some instances we are seeing advertisers increasing their year-on-year spend within Fabulous magazine."

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +