Trinity Mirror hit by Tesco scandal as print advertising tumbles 12pc Simon Fox, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, highlighted the group's digital growth, which included a 93pc increase in average monthly page views for its websites, to more than 575 million. He said: "I am pleased with the strategic progress we are making in building the scale and reach of our digital brands. At the end of September our group digital audience exceeded 90 million monthly unique users with continued strong growth in digital revenue. Despite the recent deterioration in national press advertising trends I remain confident that our strategic initiatives will ultimately deliver sustainable growth in revenues and profits. Digital sales increased 44pc, but from a low base that meant the growth was not enough to offset the accelerating decline of print. Total group revenues for the period were down 5pc. Nick Dempsey, a media analyst at Barclays, said: "We imagine that the difficulties at Tesco in particular are causing a pullback in ad spend." However, he said that Trinity Mirror's cost-cutting regime, which has included redundancies and the closure of some titles, was helping mitigate the problems and maintained forecasts for the group. Trinity Mirror offered no new details for shareholders on the ongoing High Court claims against it by alleged victims of phone hacking by its journalists. The company said in July it had set aside £4m for potential compensation payments and said on Monday that it had not made any further provisions. Investors sent Trinity Mirror shares down nearly 5pc on the trading update.