CAPTION: Digital revenues at German newspapers top €1 billion for first time. (picture alliance / dpa)
German newspaper publishers generated more than €1 billion ($1.03 billion) in revenues from digital offerings for the first time last year, the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) said on Monday.
About a third of this - €365 million - came from the sale of e-paper copies. In addition, there was €657 million in other digital sales. This primarily means internet advertising, but also paid content offers.
E-paper circulation continues to gain considerably in importance. According to the data, it amounted to 2.21 million copies last year - an increase of 10%.
"It is becoming apparent that subscriptions to e-papers are also valued: Two out of three e-paper copies are subscriptions," the association said.
According to the 2021 figures, newspapers have made up for the coronavirus-induced decline in sales from the previous year. At €7.2 billion, they achieved a slight increase of 0.6% in nominal terms, according to the report.
"The main reason for this was advertising revenue, which rose by a good 7% to €1.95 billion after the slump in the previous year. However, they were still about a tenth lower than in the pre-coronavirus year 2019."
Revenue from subscriptions, sales and on-board copies increased by 1.5% to €5.25 billion. The BDZV said this was almost 6% more than before the coronavirus. The BDZV does not publish industry-wide profit figures.
"The regional subscription newspapers were able to break the negative trend in total sales in 2021 and, with €5.92 billion, nominally reached the result of 2017 again," the analysis continued.
In Germany, 14.61 million print copies will be sold every publication day in 2022, as of the second quarter of 2022. Of these, 11.72 million are daily newspapers, 1.29 million Sunday newspapers and 1.6 million weekly newspapers.
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