Israel's freesheets continued to expand their exposure rates in the second half of 2008. The daily exposure rates, excluding overlap, of the freesheets - "Israel Today", "24 Minutes", and "Post" - averaged 26.9% in the second half of 2008, up from an average of 22.5% in the first half, according to the TGI survey for the second half of 2008.
A significant statistic in the TGI survey showed that 11.3% of the public read only the freesheets in the second half, up from 8.5% of the public in the first half. A quarter of freesheets' readers read more than one of them.
The number of readers of newspapers in general increased in the second half. The average exposure rate of a daily newspaper rose to 60.9% in the second half from 59.1% in the first half, despite a drop in readership of the four veteran newspapers "Yediot Ahronot", "Ma'ariv", "Haaretz", and "Globes".
The average daily exposure rate of the four veteran newspapers declined to 49.3% in the second half of last year from 50.1% in the first half.
This means that the increase in overall newspaper exposure rates was due to the increase by the freesheets.
TGI also reports that the two largest dailies, "Yediot Ahronot" and "Ma'ariv", both saw a decline in their exposure rates. "Yediot Ahronot's" exposure rate fell to 36.2% in 2008 from 38.4% in 2007, while "Ma'ariv's" exposure rate fell by 15%. "Haaretz" and "Globes" saw no significant change in their exposure rates.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 28, 2009
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