Die Welt Multimedia-Reichweite 1) Background The quantification of Die Welt s average daily audience (known as Multimedia-Reichweite, MMR) has been developed by Die Welt management, including the research department of Welt Gruppe, using recognised and accepted industry sources: Research conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach over media consumption in Germany; Research conducted by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Forschung (AGOF); Research conducted by Info GmbH (INFO); and Unique user and unique browser data from the Webtrekk web analytics system. The Multimedia-Reichweite (MMR) is Die Welt management s best estimate of the de-duplicated number of people who, in an average day, consume Die Welt content via the print newspaper or digitally via the website www.welt.de or via the Die Welt tablet or smartphone apps or via the Die Welt mobile website m.welt.de. This estimated MMR for the 3 month period 1 April 2013 to 30 June 2013 is reported in the MMR certificate. The calculation of the estimated MMR is set out in sections 2 and 3 below. Wherever possible, the average daily audience for each platform excludes Sundays. The estimated MMR has been subject to independent assurance by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP UK (PwC). Their independent assurance opinion is set out on the final page of this document. This document, comprising Die Welt management s methodology and the PwC independent assurance opinion, together with Die Welt management s MMR certificate, will be published online at www.mediapilot.de/welt/mulitmedia-reichweite. 2) Die Welt Multimedia-Reichweite results 3) Calculation of the estimated MMR The estimated MMR comprises: i) Print audience of Die Welt: daily print readership of Die Welt for Monday to Saturday, as per national readership data published in the Allensbach Media Market Analysis (AWA) study conducted by the Allensbach institute; ii) Website audience of www.welt.de: daily website unique users of www.welt.de for Monday to Sunday, as per national readership data published by AGOF; iii) Tablet and smartphone app edition audiences: unique client data for daily app edition downloads for Monday to Saturday, as per Die Welt s web analytics system Webtrekk supplemented by an ipad readership survey conducted by INFO for ipad app edition audiences; iv) Mobile web audience of m.welt.de: daily website unique browsers of m.welt.de for Monday to Saturday, as per Webtrekk; v) Less: duplicated consumption across these platforms (i.e. platform overlap, or super users ) to ensure each member of the Die Welt audience is only counted once. 1
Notes: Gross audience is the total (prior to de-duplication) of (i) print audience; (ii) website audience; (iii) tablet and smartphone app edition audiences and (iv) mobile web audience. The duplication adjustment represents the platform overlap or super-users (i.e. those who, in an average day, consume Die Welt content across multiple platforms). It is deducted from the gross audience to ensure each member of this platform overlap is only counted once in the MMR. i) Print audience a) Definition of daily print audience The globally accepted industry definition of print readership is Average Issue Readership (AIR) (i.e. the number of people who read a given publication within its publication period ). It is typically based on probabilities generated from one or both of these two questions: - When did you last read publication x? - How often do you read publication x? b) Calculation of daily print audience using the AWA print readership survey The daily print audience is from the AWA readership survey that is conducted annually by the Institut fur Demoskopie Allensbach. The survey is conducted annually through face-to-face interviews with a sample of 25,677 people. The findings are representative of the German-speaking population age 14 and over. The AWA's primary focus is on measuring the reach of about 300 print titles and is considered to be industry standard data. The most recently available AWA readership data has been used in the MMR calculation. This was published in July 2013 for the period 1 April 2012 31 March 2013. It measured Die Welt s daily print readership in Germany at 909,000. There is also some print readership outside Germany, but since this is not covered by the AWA readership survey it has been conservatively excluded from the MMR calculation. ii) Website audience a) Definition of daily website audience The industry-agreed metric for website audience in Germany is the internet facts report by AGOF (i.e. the working group for online media research). This report, based on survey data from a sample of approximately 112,000 people, sets out the average daily Monday Sunday unique users for participating websites for a rolling three-month period, released on a three-month time lag. This survey is the industry-agreed agreed method in Germany to correct for the problem that one (non-registered) user accessing web content via two different browser devices would be counted as two unique browsers, but in reality only represents one unique user. b) Calculation of daily website audience using the AGOF report Die Welt publishes content on its website www.welt.de. Anonymous users (unique browsers) are able to access a certain number of pages in a calendar month before they are required to subscribe (pay) and log in as unique users. This paywall was introduced from 1 January 2013. For this iteration of the MMR certificate the most recently available AGOF unique user data is 1 February 2013 30 April 2013. It measured www.welt.de daily unique users in Germany at 757,000. There is also website use outside Germany, but since this is not covered by the AGOF report it has been conservatively excluded from the MMR calculation. 2
iii) Tablet and smartphone app edition audiences a) Definition of daily tablet and smartphone app edition audiences The definition of daily tablet app edition and smartphone app edition audiences is the average daily unique clients during Mondays to Saturdays in the MMR certificate period 1 April 2013 30 June 2013 who have downloaded an app edition of Die Welt via a tablet app or smartphone app. Unique clients and app edition downloads are tracked in Die Welt s web analytics system Webtrekk. Webtrekk provides census-based data by recording all actual requests for online pages and app editions. It measures digital usage from any device (e.g. desktop computer or smartphone) at any location (e.g. home or work). For subscribers, Webtrekk uses customer IDs to uniquely identify these clients and track their consumption across multiple devices, platforms and locations. For anonymous users, Webtrekk uses cookies to identify unique browsers across multiple access sessions by that browser. Die Welt s tablet and smartphone app editions require clients to subscribe. The apps collect the unique customer ID, which is then sent to Webtrekk from the tablet or smartphone. Daily app edition downloads are therefore tracked and reported by Webtrekk at the level of unique client (not unique browser) using the customer ID. (A customer ID is unique within each device app, but a single client using multiple devices does not always use a single ID across all apps on all devices. As a result, it is not possible to perform a full de-duplication of consumers across digital platforms without using survey data). b) Calculation of daily tablet and smartphone app edition audiences using Webtrekk unique client data The average daily unique clients who downloaded an app edition on Mondays to Saturdays in the period 1 April 2013 30 June 2013 were reported by Webtrekk across three tablet apps (ipad, HD Android and Kindle Fire) and three smartphone apps (iphone, Android and Blackberry). Each of these apps requires a subscription so daily downloads of app editions can be tracked at the level of unique clients. From 16 March 2013, the ipad app edition is bing pushed automatically to all registered users of the ipad app. In order to assess the number of daily unique clients who have read the ipad app edition during the period 1 April 2013-30 June 2013, a survey of digital users was conducted by INFO from 3 July 2013 to 9 July 2013. This survey was sent to 11,272 subscribers by email and also hosted as a pop-up within the ipad app. The 3,301 responses from the INFO survey were weighted to create a percentage of ipad subscribers who read the ipad edition on a daily basis. The average number of unique clients automatically receiving the daily ipad app edition is 59,276. After weighting for survey responses, the average daily ipad app edition audience used within the total app editions in the MMR calculation for the period 1 April 2013 to 30 June 2013 is 32,311. The global average unique client daily app edition downloads for tablets (ipad, HD Android and Kindle Fire) were 32,815. The global average unique client daily app edition downloads for smartphones (iphone, Android and Blackberry) were 7,934. iv) Mobile website audience a) Definition of daily mobile website audience The definition of daily mobile website audience is the average daily unique browsers during Mondays to Saturdays in the MMR certificate period 1 April 2013 30 June 2013 that have accessed content on m.welt.de. Since the website paywall permits users to access up to a certain number of pages per month without subscribing, mobile web audience data is collected in Webtrekk at the level of unique browser (not unique client) using cookies. Users for whom cookies are disabled are not included as part of the mobile audience. 3
b) Calculation of daily mobile website audience using Webtrekk unique browser data The average daily unique browsers who accessed content on m.welt.de on Mondays to Saturdays in the period 1 April 2013 30 June 2013 was reported directly in Webtrekk. The global average daily unique browsers of the mobile website were 245,049. v) Calculating duplication The print and digital audiences in 3(i) to 3(iv) above give the average daily gross audience of the five platforms prior to de-duplication: Print: 909,000 Website: 757,000 Tablet app: 32,815 Smartphone app: 7,934 Mobile web: 245,049 Gross audience (total): 1,951,798 Within this total, there will be a number of readers who consume Die Welt content on more than one platform on a daily basis. These consumers will be counted two or three or four or five times in the total audience unless this duplication is removed. (A) Die Welt newspaper (print) (B) Website www.welt.de (C) Die Welt tablet app (D) Die Welt smartphone app (E) Mobile website m.welt.de 4
(A) Die Welt newspaper (print) A (E) Mobile website m.welt.de E CE CDE AE ACE ACDE ADE AD ABD AB ABDE B (B) Web audience www.welt.de DE BCDE BDE ABCDE ABE BE BD BCD ABCD ABCE BCE BC ABC D CD ACD AC (D) Die Welt smartphone app C (C) Die Welt tablet app Data from the Allensbach Computer and Technology Analysis (ACTA) survey conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach was used to calculate the number of individuals who consume Die Welt content on more than one platform on a daily basis. The ACTA survey is based on a sample population of 8,623 face-to-face interviews. The sample is representative of the population age 14-69. The ACTA survey measures print, online and mobile media consumption. Since the ACTA survey is only representative of those aged 14-69, a top up survey of people aged 70+ was carried out by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, asking the same questions as the previous survey. The sample size of this survey was 785. Data from the two surveys, the original ACTA survey and the top up survey, was then combined to create a data set of 9,408 respondents. The responses from the two surveys were weighted according to population data for Germany to ensure that the final data set was representative for the entire German population. Both surveys asked questions about the recency of consumption of Die Welt content across each of the five platforms. The responses to these questions were allocated into 32 different segments based on their consumption patterns where respondents stated they had read Die Welt content daily, almost daily, today or yesterday : Segment 1: consume Die Welt content through all 5 platforms (ABCDE) Segment 2: consume Die Welt content through print, web, smartphone and mobile website (ABDE) Segment 3: consume Die Welt content through print, web, tablet and mobile website (ABCE) Segment 4: consume Die Welt content through print, web and mobile website (ABE) Segment 5: consume Die Welt content through print, web, tablet and smartphone (ABCD) Segment 6: consume Die Welt content through print, web and smartphone (ABD) Segment 7: consume Die Welt content through print, web and tablet (ABC) 5
Segment 8: consume Die Welt content through print and web (AB) Segment 9: consume Die Welt content through print, tablet, smartphone and mobile website (ACDE) Segment 10: consume Die Welt content through print, smartphone and mobile website (ADE) Segment 11: consume Die Welt content through print, tablet and mobile website (ACE) Segment 12: consume Die Welt content through print and mobile website (AE) Segment 13: consume Die Welt content through print, tablet and smartphone (ACD) Segment 14: consume Die Welt content through print and smartphone (AD) Segment 15: consume Die Welt content through print and tablet (AC) Segment 16: consume Die Welt content through just print (A) Segment 17: consume Die Welt content through web, tablet, smartphone and mobile website (BCDE) Segment 18: consume Die Welt content through web, smartphone and mobile website (BDE) Segment 19: consume Die Welt content through web, tablet and mobile website (BCE) Segment 20: consume Die Welt content through web and mobile website (BE) Segment 21: consume Die Welt content through web, tablet and smartphone (BCD) Segment 22: consume Die Welt content through web and smartphone (BD) Segment 23: consume Die Welt content through web and tablet (BC) Segment 24: consume Die Welt content through just web (B) Segment 25: consume Die Welt content through tablet, smartphone and mobile website (CDE) Segment 26: consume Die Welt content through smartphone and mobile website (DE) Segment 27: consume Die Welt content through tablet and mobile website (CE) Segment 28: consume Die Welt content through just mobile website (E) Segment 29: consume Die Welt content through tablet and smartphone (CD) Segment 30: consume Die Welt content through just smartphone (D) Segment 31: consume Die Welt content through just tablet (C) Segment 32: do not consume Die Welt content through any of the 5 platforms The MMR calculation defines the net daily average audience of Die Welt. The readers in segment 32 are not regular readers - they do not read any platform daily, almost daily, today or yesterday - and so are unable to be duplicates (super users) and therefore are excluded from the de-duplication calculation. The responses in segments 1-31, representing readers who may be potential duplicates (super users), are renormalized to give the relative proportions of readers in each platform combination. The gross audience of 1,951,798 is then allocated between the various platform combinations in accordance with the relative proportions of survey respondents in segments 1-31. However, this allocation is based on survey responses from a sample that does not necessarily mirror the relative proportions of the known gross audiences of each platform. A mathematical re-weighting process is applied to the various platform combinations to ensure that the totals within each platform agree to the known gross audiences for each platform. This corrects for the different relative proportions of the survey sample and the gross audiences across each platform. Once the re-weighting process is finished, the estimated populations for all possible duplication combinations are known and the duplicates can be deducted from the gross audience to give the Die Welt estimated average daily Multimedia-Reichweite. 6
Independent Accountant s Report to the Directors of Axel Springer AG on the estimated Multimedia-Reichweite of Die Welt We have been engaged by the Directors of Axel Springer AG (the Company ) to perform an independent limited assurance engagement over the application of the Company s methodology (the Methodology ) in calculating the estimated average daily Multimedia- Reichweite ( MMR ) of Die Welt and reporting in its MMR Certificate for the 3 month period 1 April 2013 to 30 June 2013. Respective responsibilities of the Directors and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP The Directors of the Company are responsible for establishing an appropriate Methodology (available on the Company s website www.mediapilot.de/welt/mulitmedia-reichweite) to meet the needs of intended users in respect of estimated MMR of Die Welt and for ensuring that the estimated MMR is calculated and reported in accordance with the Methodology. The maintenance and integrity of the www.welt.de website is the responsibility of the directors; our work does not involve consideration of these matters and, accordingly, we accept no responsibility for any changes that may have occurred to the estimated MMR since it was initially presented on the website. Our report and the associated Methodology have also been translated from the English original into German for presentation on the www.welt.de website. All possible care has been taken to ensure that the German translation is an accurate representation of the English original. However, in all matters of interpretation of information, views or opinions, the original English versions take precedence over the German translation. Our responsibility is to express a conclusion to the Directors on the application of the Methodology in calculating and reporting the attached estimated MMR based on the results of our work referred to below. This report, including the conclusion, has been prepared for and only for the Directors of the Company as a body for management purposes. We permit the publication of our report to assist the Directors in demonstrating that they have commissioned an independent assurance report in respect of the estimated MMR without accepting or assuming responsibility for any other purpose or to anyone other than the Directors as a body and the Company for our work, for this report or for the conclusions that we have formed, save where expressly agreed by our prior consent in writing. Basis of conclusion We conducted our engagement in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000 (Revised) Assurance Engagements other than Audits and Reviews of Historical Financial Information issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. We planned and performed our work so as to obtain all the information and explanations that we considered necessary in order to provide us with sufficient evidence to express a conclusion on the application of the Methodology in calculating and reporting the attached estimated MMR. Our work was limited to examining the relevant activities undertaken by the Company and its suppliers. We verified print readership numbers to corresponding third party published survey reports, but did not visit these survey providers to do detailed testing on their survey returns. Our work included: Examining the Methodology and assessing any key assumptions and limitations; Agreeing third party readership numbers to corresponding third party published survey reports for both print and web data; Testing of third party systems to support digital users of the Die Welt tablet app, the Die Welt smartphone app and the Die Welt mobile website; Assessment of the ACTA survey methodology used to estimate de-duplication between the audiences of the five platforms; Testing the mathematical accuracy of the de-duplication and overall estimated MMR calculation; Checking the estimated MMR is accurately reported in management s MMR Certificate; and Enquiries of relevant management. Inherent limitations The calculation of the estimated MMR inevitably includes assumptions and judgement and is subject to uncertainty in these key areas: Actual print readership and website unique users will vary from that estimated by third party survey providers extrapolating from survey responses; From time to time third party survey providers may amend their survey approach, thereby affecting the consistency and comparability between periods of the print readership and website unique user data that underlies the calculation of the estimated MMR; and Unique browsers are identified through tracking cookies, but where cookies are disabled it is not possible to identify how many times that browser accesses the website. The calculation of the estimated MMR is set out in more detail in the Methodology. Conclusion Based on the results of our work, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the attached estimated MMR for the 3 month period 1 April 2013 to 30 June 2013 has not been calculated and reported, in all material respects, in accordance with the Methodology. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Chartered Accountants London 19 July 2013