Daily Mail revenue up as B2B offsets weak ads

By Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - Publishing group Daily Mail & General Trust said on Wednesday a fall in advertising had accelerated in the third quarter, with property and recruitment sectors particularly weak.

But the group, which publishes the Daily Mail and Evening Standard newspapers, said its overall performance had been good, with revenue growth of 5 percent due to continued strong trading from its business information unit.

The news sent shares in Daily Mail up 3.6 percent to 323.5 pence at 9:35 a.m. in an overall higher market although analysts mostly noted concern over the advertising comments.

"Despite the current weakness in economic conditions, our business-to-business divisions are continuing to perform well," Chairman Jonathan Harmsworth said in a statement.

"Inevitably, the well-publicised deterioration in the UK economy since we last reported in May is having an impact on our newspaper businesses there."

Shares in Daily Mail have fallen 37 percent this year, on fears about the strength of the advertising market, which has already prompted a profit warning from Trinity Mirror and a rights issue from regional group Johnston Press.

Daily Mail said advertising revenue for the national Associated unit fell 3 percent and was down 11 percent for the regional Northcliffe division.

However, advertising revenue for the Associated unit includes the faster-growing digital advertising sales, and without this, advertising for Associated's newspapers only was down 5 percent.