Regulators were wrong to approve a major new direct mail contract for the US Postal Service, and the ruling is likely to be overturned by the courts, a key advisor said yesterday.
Read MoreThe US newspaper industry has taken to the law courts in an attempt to block a key US Postal Service direct mail contract, which was approved by regulators last week.
Read MoreUS regulators have given the green light to a controversial mail contract for one of the US Postal Service’s largest customers, direct marketing giant Valassis.
Read MoreRoughly 59.6 million people visited newspaper Web sites in July, according to new figures from the Newspaper Association of America. That’s 37.1 pct of all active Internet users in the U.S., and the number represents a 9 pct increase over the same month in 2006.
In fact, it’s the second-largest monthly audience on record since 2004, when NAA started tracking Web audiences. (The top spot is held by May of this year, when NAA reported 60.3 million visitors.)
This good news for newspapers comes alongside a new report on the total print and online “footprint” of newspapers, based on analysis of Scarborough data, which found that 77 pct of adults read a newspaper in print or online every week during the third quarter. The duration of online visits is also on the upswing, with users spending an average of 43 minutes per month on newspaper Web sites during the third quarter of 2007, versus 40 minutes in the same period last year.
The historic and current figures are all available in the Newspaper Audience Database or NAdbase report produced by the NAA, which contains other data detailing newspaper readership, including the following statistics: 85 pct of individuals from households with annual incomes over USD 100,000 read a newspaper in print or online each week; so do 84 pct of college graduates. Also, 82 pct of individuals who bought something online in the last year.
Read MoreThe nation’s daily newspapers are spending nearly USD 1 billion on postage for services from the U.S. Postal Service, according to a national survey by the Newspaper Association of America. According to the survey, newspapers spent more than USD 972 million in 2006 compared with USD 901 million in 2004 and USD 700 million in 2002.
“Collectively, daily newspapers are a leading customer of the U.S. Postal Service and many of our member newspapers are the largest mailers in their local markets,” said John F. Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America. The national survey also found that 47 percent of the Standard Mail products mailed by daily newspapers— principally newspapers’ Total Market Coverage product — are entered at local post offices called Destination Delivery Units.
These products are equally distributed through both high-density and saturation rates. The findings reinforce the importance of local entry and the partnership newspapers have with local postal delivery units to ensure that advertising products are delivered in a timely and efficient manner to meet the needs of a newspaper’s advertising customers.”
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