Mail Online grew advertising revenue by 51% year on year in the five months to the end of February, pulling in £23m, putting it just behind the £5m-a-month average needed to hit its target of £60m in revenue this financial year.
Mail Online made an average of £4.6m a month in revenue in the five-month period covered by a trading update published on Thursday, short of the £5m-a-month run rate required across the year to hit the target.
Mail Online missed its £45m revenue target in the last financial year – hitting £41m – and requires an average of 46% growth on that figure across 2014 to hit £60m.
The 51% rate in the first five months of DMGT's new financial year bodes well for Mail Online hitting its numbers, however the company admitted that late February through to mid-March had been tougher due to the year-on-year change when Easter fell.
The performance of the site, which is on the brink of passing the 200 million monthly browser mark, more than covered the print advertising decline at the Mail titles over the five-month period.
Mail Online grew digital ad revenues by £8m, from £15m to £23m, while the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday saw print ad revenues fall £2m from £86m to £84m.
The newspaper operations form part of DMG Media, the division which also includes operations such as recruitment business Evenbase and deals service Wowcher,
DMG Media reported an overall revenues fall of 1% in the five months to the end of February.
Within this, advertising revenues rose 3% year on year, while circulation income fell 4%.
In the four weeks since 23 February, total underlying ad revenue fell 7% year on year. DMGT said this is in part due to the fact that Easter falls three weeks later in 2014 than in 2013.
• The headline, standfirst and text of this article was amended on 28 March 2014 to make clear that Mail Online is on track to meet its target of £5m a month in advertising revenue
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