Circulation Versus Advertiser Appeal in the Newspaper Industry: An Empirical Investigation

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Advertising space is not a homogeneous commodity but something whose value depends on the characteristics of a newspaper's readership. It is suggested, in particular, that the proportion of readers belonging to the more affluent social categories will exert a strong positive influence on advertising. This paper investigates the circulation/readership-profile relation using a simple simultaneous equation framework. The model is then estimated across a sample of British and Irish daily and Sunday newspapers, using data collected from industry sources. The paper then seeks to quantify the trade-off between circulation and the proportion of high income readers.