One in three Belgian and one in four French cross-border residents are Paperjam readers--this is the result of the new Ilres study, which takes into account the consumption habits of cross-border residents. Just last month, at the , the annual meeting of clients of Maison Moderne [publisher of Paperjam], CEO, , presented Luxembourg as "a market that is as interesting as it is heterogeneous", with audiences made up of residents of at least four countries and consuming media in at least five languages.

He also spoke of "a market that lacks data". The reason for this is that media studies such as Ilres Plurimedia's often focus on residents, and do not offer English as a language for the questionnaire. De facto, the 221,000 cross-border commuters and resident English-speaking expatriates are excluded from the data. In other words, the traditional Plurimedia study is only based on a part of the population and ignores half of the active population of Luxembourg.

In the DNA of Paperjam...

The new study--also carried out by Ilres on the initiative of the daily newspaper L'essentiel--focuses this time on Belgian and French cross-border workers. The field surveys lasted five weeks and were conducted during autumn. The results have just been released.

"These figures are a recognition of the qualitative and professional work carried out by the Paperjam editorial teams. They confirm our feeling that cross-border residents, whether business owners or employees, are looking for value-added information in the fields of finance, economics, business, politics, social issues, international relations and culture. This is in the DNA of Paperjam. It is now up to us to serve them even better,” says , interim editor-in-chief of Paperjam.

44,900 readers are border residents

"Until now, we estimated the readership of Paperjam to be 76,200 residents and cross-border residents. Ilres certified a total of 57,200 resident readers, to which we added 19,000 cross-border commuters, based on the assumption that one in four readers is a cross-border commuter," says , director of the Maison Moderne Brand Studio. "This new study counts 44,900 Belgian and French border readers for Paperjam. This represents 102,100 resident and border readers. For advertisers, this means a spectacular drop in CPM [cost per thousand impressions]."

These 44,900 cross-border readers are divided into French (28,600) and Belgian (16,300) readers. We are still missing the German cross-border readers," says , administrative and financial director (CFO) of Maison Moderne. Also missing are, according to him, "international readers who read the e-paper version of the magazine and, finally, business people passing through Luxembourg. But we finally have less approximate audience figures.” As for the Paperjam.lu website, it counts 51,300 unique visitors among French and Belgian border residents, all year round.

With 146,000 unique readers over the year, residents and cross-border commuters alike, Paperjam magazine is one of Luxembourg's leading media. "It is an independent and influential voice," adds Mike Koedinger. "The magazine is the flagship element of an ecosystem that also has more than 40,000 subscribers to Paperjam newsletters and 57,000 followers on Linkedin. Luxembourg is a 'Business Powerhouse' and Paperjam and Delano are its media."

As for L'essentiel, its free daily newspaper covers 44% of the border population, i.e. 75,900 readers, which represents an increase of 7% since the last study carried out in 2017. Its website increased from 37% in 2017 to 72% in the new study and its radio station reaches 34,200 cross-border listeners.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.