A SNAPSHOT of advertising in the Daily Star of Scotland has found that almost a quarter of the paper was taken up with adverts.
The review, of last Tuesday’s edition of the paper, found three full pages for Tesco supermarket plus almost four consecutive pages of adverts for the likes of mobile phones.
A further two-thirds of a page was devoted to chat lines while 12 ads were in-house, including for publisher, Richard Desmond’s other media ventures, including the OK! magazine website.
The review is part of an allmediascotland.com trawl of both indigenous titles and London ones operating as clear Scottish editions, such as The Daily Mail but not the Daily Mirror which, despite its Scottish branding in its masthead, last Tuesday contained only a couple of Scottish stories, both by Maggie Barry.
Already, allmediascotland.com has found that last Tuesday’s 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 figure for the Metro was 26.49 per cent, while the Scottish Sun came in at 28.05 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 last Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Record, Press and Journal, The Times (Scotland), The Daily Mail 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.
Last Tuesday’s 56-page edition of the Daily Star of Scotland also included a four-page, ‘virtual horseracing’ supplement, which included promotional advertising.
Excluding the in-house ads, some 23.91 per cent of the paper’s content was given over to advertising.
The Daily Star of Scotland retails, Monday-Friday, for 20p.
