The UK’s largest commercial news publisher Reach has seen a drop in advertising revenue and a near-halving of pre-tax profits.
The Daily Mirror and Daily Express publisher also cited a considerable fall in digital readership for its newspapers when it revealed that annual pre-tax profits had dropped by 45% to £36.7 million.
This fall was at least partly down to a decision by Facebook last year to stop supporting its ‘News’ tab in the UK, France, and Germany after both the EU and UK governments intimated that they may force the tech giant to pay for the news it shares on its platform.
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The 24% year-on-year drop in digital page views can also be attributed to a range of disruptive updates to Google algorithms, which governs the ranking of news stories on search pages.
Although the publisher has said that it expects this significant drop in its digital performance to affect its first quarter results, it forecasts “growing momentum across [its] digital business.” Its overall revenue has fallen by over 5% to £570 million.
Reach has often been criticised for the intrusive nature of the advertising across its wide range of online publications, with chief executive Jim McMullen admitting that this was a ‘necessary deal’ with customers in exchange for receiving free news.
