John Fairfax Holdings Limited
ACN 008 663 161

SYDNEY, January 18, 1999 – An authoritative report by Media Monitoring Services (MMS) has confirmed that John Fairfax Holdings [ASX: FXJ] as one of the fastest-growing magazine publisher in Australia. MMS measures advertising in print media.

In calendar 1998, total advertising pages in the insert magazines Good Weekend, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, SundayLife!, and BRW grew by 36.52% -- one of the highest growth rate as measured by MMS.

Fairfax, with 15.7% advertising volume market share, is the second-largest magazine publisher in Australia by a wide margin, and is ahead of News Group (9.3%), Murdoch (5.9%) and Time Inc Magazines (4.7%).

Mr Peter Miller, Group Sales and Marketing Director for Fairfax, said:

"Based on this strong performance of a growth rate of over 35% in 1998, Fairfax is strategically and aggressively positioned with the major advertisers and with the agencies in Australia.

"This also gives us a unique edge as we develop and grow our online services and the new advertising opportunities they clearly present."

Mr Miller said that magazine advertising revenue will account for approximately 19% of Fairfax’s total display revenues and approximately 10% of total advertising revenues this financial year.

"The growth in our magazines shows that advertisers are investing with confidence in our affluent readerships. While there is differing performance for the various titles we publish in conjunction with our newspapers, the overall results, taken as a whole, are strong," Mr Miller added.

The only magazine publisher with greater advertising volumes is ACP which held market share steady at 28.9%.

The MMS figures

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John Fairfax [ASX:FXJ] is Australia’s leading publishing group. Its mastheads include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Sun-Herald, and BRW. In addition, the company publishes financial and consumer magazines, and provides online services. In 1998, the company had revenues of over $1.1 billion. Fairfax is Australia’s leading content provider on the Internet, with more than 20 million page views per month, and 100,000 site visits per day.

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