Daily Mail group sees plunge in classified advertising

Daily Mail & General Trust has seen revenues for classified advertising fall up to 11 per cent at its newspapers over the past five months.

The company, which publishes national and local papers, said recruitment ads were worst hit for the five months to the end of February. Job ads at its Northcliffe local newspaper business were down 19 per cent in the October to December quarter, before recovering slightly to a fall of 12 per cent in January and February. Overall, Northcliffe's ad revenues were down 7 per cent for the five months to the end of February.

At the national newspapers, contained in the Associated division, ad sales were down 9 per cent.

Peter Williams, DMGT's finance director, admitted the scale of the downturn was "a factor" in the company's inability to sell Northcliffe for the price the company had sought. The division was put up for sale late last year but the company decided last month the offers it had attracted were inadequate.

DMGT's two major listed competitors, Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press, have recently reported even greater falls in ad revenues.

Mr Williams said DMGT had tracked recruitment advertisements over the past 20 years against the number of unemployed, and the trend remained "exactly in line".

"The reason why we are not getting recruitment ads is that people are not recruiting," he said.

He pointed out that Aberdeen, the one area of the country that was booming economically, had seen double-digit growth in job ads in the company's newspaper in the city.

Mr Williams denied that ads were migrating to the internet, except in the category of second-hand car sales. Motoring ads were down 14 per cent at Northcliffe for the five-month period. Here, he conceded ads were going on to the internet but he added that car sales were doing badly anyway.

At the national newspapers, led by the Daily Mail, the company saw display ads down 10 per cent and classified 11 per cent lower. However, he said in the past couple of weeks there had been signs of sentiment among advertisers picking up. "At least there is a glimmer of hope," Mr Williams said.

DMGT's other main business, business-to-business publishing, continued to perform strongly. Revenues for the five months were up 20 per cent.