Just over a fifth of Daily Record devoted to ads

A SNAPSHOT of advertising in the Daily Record has found that just over a fifth of the paper was taken up with adverts.

The review, of the January 13 edition of the paper, found three full pages for Tesco supermarket (as in the case of most other newspapers that day) plus eight in-house ads (including half a page for the Record’s Get Fit website and a full-page for its car website) and four readers offers, including with watchmakers, Casio.

The review is part of an allmediascotland.com trawl of both indigenous titles and London ones operating as clear Scottish editions.

Already, allmediascotland.com has found that the January 13 edition of The Scotsman comprised 12.69 per cent of display and classified adverts, while The Herald’s total – on the same day – was 24.65 per cent. The corresponding figures for the Metro, Scottish Sun, Daily Star of Scotland and the Scottish Daily Mail were 26.49 per cent, 28.05 per cent, 23.91 per cent and 20.05 per cent. The Courier’s total, even including in-house ads, was 14 per cent.

allmediascotland has still to reveal the amount taken up by adverts in the relevant editions of The Press and Journal, The Times (Scotland) and The Express.

It was not possible to say whether any of the adverts recorded were appearing at massively-reduced prices or even for free. And, of course, the Scottish editions of London-based titles included adverts sourced for UK-wide consumption.

The review follows last week’s reporting on allmediascotland.com of the quarterly, Bellwether, survey of company marketing budgets which recorded the biggest decrease in ad spending plans in its nine-year-history.

Only seven per cent of companies reported plans to increase their marketing, while 49 per cent said they were planning to decrease.

The January 13, 52-page edition of the Record included an insert for Vodafone, plus an eight-page Woman supplement and the four-page Funday Tuesday supplement, which included one, sixth-of-a-page ad.

Excluding the in-house ads, the reader offers and the Vodafone insert, some 20.86 per cent of the paper’s content was given over to advertising.

The Daily Record retails, Monday-Friday, for 40p.