Weekly Digest: Ad Decline Following the Queen’s Death, TikTok’s Leap into E-commerce

Queen Elizabeth’s death in mid-September caused Reach, the company that owns titles like the Daily Express and Daily Mirror, to see a noticeable decline in advertising revenue.

While it had always been obvious that the decision not to run ads during the mourning period would have a financial impact on publishers, we now have more precise numbers for one of Britain’s largest newspaper publishers. Particularly, the company reported its print advertising fell almost a third in September, while digital revenue decreased by 8% for the month of the Queen’s funeral.

As The Financial Times notes, “Reach’s trading figures are the first public benchmark for how the advertising slowdown during the funeral may have hit other media outlets in the UK, including Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, Lord Rothermere’s Mail titles and commercial broadcasters such as ITV”. While the news of the Queen’s death caused a spike in newsletter sales, FT reports, this additional revenue has been short of covering the impact of the ad blackout.

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America’s second biggest newspaper owner – Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that operates some 200 newspapers in the United States, such as The Chicago Tribune – will stop the practice of the outlets endorsing nationwide and statewide political candidates. 

The New York Times reports that in an editorial scheduled for Friday and obtained by NYT “the company’s publications will tell readers that they will stop endorsing candidates in presidential, Senate and gubernatorial elections.” (However, local candidates can still be endorsed).

Although the practice of endorsing political candidates has deep roots in the United States, it has attracted controversy in recent years because of its potential for further decreasing trust in journalism, with many readers not seeing the distinction between the editorial board that typically endorses candidates and the newsroom.

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TikTok is looking to expand into the e-commerce industry, Axios reports. The company posted a slate of LinkedIn job openings indicating the plans to build product fulfilment centres in the United States.

As Axios’ Sara Fischer notes, “the move signifies TikTok’s commitment to e-commerce as its next major revenue stream, following the explosive growth of its ads business”, which could be an opportunity to increase profits in the US and across the world, as well as give the company more control over its revenue streams. 

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