With So Many Free Newspapers Thrown Away After The Casual Commuter Read Are They Really A Good Deal For The Advertiser?

Philip M. Stone September 25, 2006

There’s a curious quirk about free newspapers that should worry advertisers. In London with the introduction of London Lite and thelondonpaper, the trash cleaned up by the London Underground (subway) each night has nearly doubled. In New York hawking free newspapers at subway stations added 15 tons of trash daily to the system in 2005.

So what seems to be happening is that the free paper is a convenient read on the journey but once finished it gets tossed. So does the reader remember any advertising from that casual read? Unless it really caught the eye, or got torn out, it’s probably a lost message.

Which is a good indication why the new trend for free newspapers these days is to get them delivered to the household. There it gets read and is left lying around to be sourced again later if someone remembers something there they want to see again.

In London two new free newspapers were launched at the beginning of the month. Each claims circulation around 400,000. But is circulation the way to measure advertising success? The answer to that, as for paid newspapers, is increasingly looking like being “No”, especially when the Underground’s maintenance company, Tube Lines, says that newspaper trash has increased by some 43% since the launch of those two newspapers, and that on three of the most used lines the amount of trash has increased daily from 3 ½ tons to 5 tons.

It’s pretty obvious that a large percentage of those newspapers are not finding their way home. So is the casual one-look enough to satisfy the advertiser’s needs?

London is not an anomaly. In New York the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) said that trash in stations and on trains because of discarded free newspapers grew by 15 tons daily in 2005. The MTA said it had to hire more cleaners, it transferred other workers to be cleaners, and had to pay more to the company hired to haul all the garbage away.

Apparently also in New York there was the problem that if the hawkers hadn’t given out all their papers then they just dumped them at the station – that’s a no-no for trash purposes but also it puts to the question the real circulation of the freebies.

There is beginning to be some thought, too, that the morning free newspaper has a better chance of being retained than the PM version. The thinking goes that with the morning free read if the commuter sees something of interest the newspaper is kept and then at the office some surfing could well be done via the company internet to follow up some of the advertising. The thinking goes that to take the newspaper home to do that surfing on the home computer on one’s own time is not nearly so appealing.

Indeed that could be one reason why CityAM has been such a success in London. Started just a year ago, its circulation is now just shy of 100,000 daily. It is given out to readers AFTER the daily commute and they do, indeed, take it with them to the office and only the reader knows for sure if it is read on company time or during breaks, and what Internet follow-up is done on company time.

The power of getting that newspaper into the commuter’s hands early in the day is also a reason why Danish publishers are up in arms over the decision by the competition authority to allow a joint venture to go forward between the Post Office and a free daily newspaper that will guarantee that paper’s delivery to households by 7 a.m.

The authority allowed the deal to go ahead, but only on an exclusive basis for one-year, between Dagsbrun, the Icelandic company behind the new Nyhedsavidsen free paper, and the Post Office.  But even one year should be enough to solidify that paper’s prominence at the breakfast table and it will be an advertiser’s delight. Competitive publishers are working on their own plans, outside of the Post Office, to achieve similar household delivery times in the major cities.

What seems now to be understood with free newspapers is that it is not just giving them out that’s important, but rather ensuring they are given at a time when readers will give them the most attention and that the messages are somehow retained. The commute time was seen as having a captive audience, but now the thinking goes it is better to get it into their hands while they are still in the house.

And that does not bode well for free PM newspapers. They also have the captive  commute audience, but if the paper is tossed then that means so is the advertising message.

Thus even if there are announcements from the two new London PM free newspapers that they have reached their circulation goals, even their readership goals, the real question becomes how well is the advertising message in those newspapers retained, and how many of those newspapers actually make it  home.

And as for telling which of the two new London newspapers are the most successful – and that’s something media buyers would love to be able to measure – it doesn’t need a rocket science solution.

Simply ask (pay) the Underground people to do some sorting. How many tons are they clearing of London Lite and how many tons of thelondonpaper. It’s as good a way as any to understand the retention value of each.

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