Straits Times: Content Analysis
Ever wondered how much of the papers were filled with advertisements? I do. In recent years, I’ve felt that much of the local Singapore newspaper (the Straits Times) has been filled too much commercial advertising, and too little content. My rough guesstimate was that about 60% of the paper was dedicated to advertising.
Last week, I pulled out a paper and tried to do a quantitative analysis. Starting with only the main section (I didn’t cover Life, the supplement) I captured digital pictures of each page and assigned a percentage of each page and how much was advertising and how much was content.
Here are my findings:
- Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005
- Total number of pages: 44
- Content: 51%
- Advertising: 49%
Surprised? I was, until I realised that most of the advertising appeared near the front of the papers, presumably where there was more reader attention. In the first 22 pages, advertising occupied 55% of the paper, which probably led to the impression I had that the Straits Times held much more advertising than it really did.
Lessons learnt:
- Instincts may not be entirely accurate- nothing beats quantitative research
- Newspapers have some more capacity to increase advertising revenue (provided they can halt the slide in readership levels)
My raw figures can be found at this link (Excel spreadsheet).