Newspaper Online Ad Growth Rate Looking Bleak
The WSJ has a story about slowing ad revenue growth on newspaper websites:
New York Times Co. warned Thursday that online advertising growth this year won't be as strong as the 30% it had projected. On the same day, Tribune Co. reported that the growth rate for first-quarter interactive revenue was sharply lower than a year earlier. Gannett Co. likewise said online revenue growth slowed in the first quarter from a year earlier.
As bad as slowing growth rates are, the article also notes that most of their online ad sales are upsells from offline sales, which disappear if they go online only.
One major issue for many newspapers online: Roughly 70% to 80% of their online revenue is tied to a classified ad sold in the print edition -- known as an "upsell," says Paul Ginocchio, a newspaper analyst at Deutsche Bank. And as newspapers see a sharp erosion in classified advertising for real estate and jobs, their Web sites are being hit as well.
I am guessing newspapers could get past this problem if they sold more advertorials or put some a href's in their online ads. Short of that though they are going to need some help from the search engines to stay financially viable, which might be part of the reason Google is anxious to start mixing fresh news into their organic search results.
Newspapers won't die IMO,
Newspapers won't die IMO, but instead will simply see a market contraction parallel to what has happened to radio/TV broadcasting.
Still, makes a lot more sense for new publications to focus on online development and only seek paper publishing as a justified expansion. I'm still seeing people trying to start up new hobby mags offline only, with little or no online presence.
Or put some a href's in their online ads
Won't they have to file with the Google Webspam Police Department so the Wall Street Journal could get blackballed by Google?
:)
Jump to mobile
Adding hrefs to the ad would be useful, even with a nofollow to adhere to the Google guidelines. The newspapers won't succeed chasing search engines and Craigslist for classified and display advertising unless they go beyond web users at home and think about integration with mobile devices.
Start offering rich content support for advertisers delivered accessed via SMS and suddenly a newspaper add has a lot more value.
Are you kidding me?
The Mobile penetration is currently so low that it doesn't even make sense.. most people use Mobile for about 10 seconds to make sure their sites are up.. then hunt for a local laptop computer to actually do work..
the writing was on the wall when the .mobi's started coming out, but ICANN moved forward with it.. even though newer mobile browsers have just started to render stuff almost up to par with desktops.. and penetration was (and still is) low by most measures. In short mobile only sites are somewhat outdated before even the .mobi's came out. It's not that people are using Mobile Devices less.. the reverse is true.. it's that the mobile devices are rendering everything nearly as good as desktop counterpart.. almost making a 'mobile only' site.. well... a thing of the past...
It's a classic case of technological advances outpacing bureaucracy.
Mobile response, not search
Founder:
I agree mobile sucks for search...but if your newspaper ad contains an SMS # for more information/rich content, then it starts to be a killer app. Imagine being able to learn more about a restaurant, hear a clip from a band playing, etc.
relevant
McClatchy 1st-Quarter Profit Plunges:
Print has been in a decline for the last ten years
Craigs List and the likes have cut deeply into the classifieds profits.
Without this revenue, newspapers have cut overhead, reporters and writers are being reduced and this has decrease the unique content in newspapers.
Many local papers are starting to look like web sites that just rely on feeds from other sites.
The younger market receives their news from the other sources and the old market in mid america has rejected the east and west coast form of reporting.
I worked in print from '78 go '98 and witnessed the beginning of the decline of the print market first hand.
Margins in some sectors went from 40% to 5% because of technology. It has taken less than 10 years for this to spread throughout most of publishing industy.