Metro mulls evening edition

Executives at the newspaper are looking at the potential for a so-called ‘PM’ edition after seeing a “big demand” for its special evening Olympic tablet edition, according to marketing communications director Bryan Scott.

Scott said the tablet demand, which saw half of its daily morning audience, which has 265,000 subscribers, opt to download the evening edition, was the “biggest learning for everyone across the business” from its Olympics activity, which included increasing its publication to seven days and an exclusive £2m deal with TeamGB sponsor Adidas

“We’re looking at the validity of the market to expand our product offers as we go forward to make the most of everything we have,” he added.

Its potential plans have been boosted by success of large scale commercial deals with leading Olympic sponsors BA and Visa, as well as Adidas, which boosted revenues by over a third (34%) for the 17 day Olympics, compared to the same period last year . Activity included a cross platform deal with BA that has so far delivered results including 4660 messages of good luck via a Team GB Feed branded with the airline’s logo, with the majority (3833) sent via the tablet edition.

However, while the publisher says it believes “there is a market for a weekend freesheet” it is not investigating a move to publish Metro seven days in the future.

The newspaper’s ‘director of Olympics’ David Vokes is overseeing activity until the end of the Paralympic Games on September 9th, after which he is considering staying on to “explore developing Metro’s sporting credentials.”