Summary

The 2015 World Press Trends report provides a snapshot of the global newspaper industry, with aggregated international data on circulation, advertising, readership, titles, revenues, digital platforms and more. The report is drawn from WAN-IFRA's World Press Trends database, which includes national reports and tools to export the data in customised reports. For those who need more flexibility than the written report provides, the World Press Trends database is available through subscription.

The report explores global trends that defined the news media business in the last year and are continuing to shape it. In each chapter, in addition to identifying a specific trend, we highlight some interesting examples and a key innovation opportunity that industry insiders have spotted.

A profound shift in the newspaper business model, which has been evolving for years, is finally here. Global newspaper circulation revenues are higher than advertising revenues for the first time this century. Audiences have become publishers’ biggest source of revenue. The industry generated an estimated US$ 179 billion in circulation and advertising revenue in 2014 – which makes it larger than the book publishing, music or film industries. Ninety-two billion dollars came from print and digital circulation, while $ 87 billion came from advertising.

Newspapers around the world are successfully proving their value to both audiences and advertisers despite the booming competition. They are discovering new markets and new business models that are today as pertinent to news production as advertising and circulation revenues. From print newspaper businesses, they have transformed themselves into true multiplatform news media businesses.

World Press Trends show once again that the news media industry is far from homogenous, and that trends vary from place to place. What is the same around the world is what we bring to our societies, the basic societal role of news media. And ensuring that we have sustainable news media businesses is central to this role.

About WPT

The World Press Trends survey includes data from more than 70 countries, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global industry’s value. The data is compiled through an enormous undertaking by dozens of national newspaper and news media associations and generous support from global data suppliers: Zenith Optimedia, IPSOS, ComScore, the Pew Research Center, RAM, and the ITU.

Though newspapers are now ubiquitous on all media platforms, the measure of their reach and influence continues to be mired in the 20th century, largely relying on print circulation and a variety of separate, non-standardised measures of digital reach. The challenge for the industry is to measure the reach of newspaper content on all platforms with new metrics. WAN-IFRA promotes industry-wide discussions and collaboration on cross-platform audience measurements and other metrics that we use as an industry to present our value, reach and impact.

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