Thursday, October 15, 2009

Wall St. Journal Sees Increase in Circulation

A bit of good news for print media. The Wall St. Journal said its circulation had increase to 2.02 million, including print and online subscriptions. USA Today has been the long-time circulation champ in the U.S., but saw its circulation drop slightly to 1.9 million.

About 356,000 people subscribe to the Journal online. It's unclear how many of those also subscribe to the print edition (as I do).

It's also important to note that the Journal's increase occurred even with a price increase -- but it's also important to note that the online subscription rate is significantly lower than the print subscription rate. So you can't estimate the revenue figure just from 2.02 million subscribers. Yet the Journal is one of a handful of sites to successfully charge t for online content.

It may not matter to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which monitors and certifies circulation figures, but I think advertisers might care about the overlap in print and online subscribers.
I wonder if my two subscriptions should count as if two people are receiving the paper. Some days I don't touch the printed version, some days, I don't log onto wsj.com. I pay twice, but I'm not two people so advertisers paying on that basis are being mislead.

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