WASHINGTON POST REVEALS THE OBVIOUS: ADVERTISERS ONLY PAY “PENNIES” FOR NEWSPAPER WEBSITE ADS
October 31st 2009 09:07
Some interesting points emerged from a Washington Post article last week on the decline of American newspapers.
The Post said, “Almost without exception, the circulation gainers are the nation's smallest daily newspapers, which tend to focus almost all of their limited resources on highly local news that is not covered by larger outside organizations. Also, these papers tend to have a lock on local ad markets.”
It added, “Online, newspapers are still a success – but only in readership, not in profit. Ads on newspaper internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their ink-on-paper cousins.
“In September, for instance, Nielsen reported that the New York Times was the internet's most popular newspaper site, with an average of 21.5 million unique visitors per month, up 7 percent compared with a year earlier. Yet last week, the Times Co reported a 27 percent drop in ad revenue for the quarter.”
The Post’s comments are interesting. Conventional web wisdom is that newspapers, lambasted as “old media,” were ridiculed as dinosaurs who were too slow to adapt to the internet and now have the nerve to want to start charging for the editorial they gave away do for so long.
But in reality most newspapers were quick to adapt to the internet and the most-read news sites on the web are mostly newspaper sites.
But newspapers were gulled by web world wizard’s who predicted that if newspapers sites were free, huge traffic would be generated and this in turn would attract the big bucks from advertisers eager to cash in on the ever expanding websites.
But nobody apparently told the advertisers. They failed to come to the party.
To repeat what the Washington Post says, “Ads on newspaper internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their ink-on-paper cousins.”
The Post said, “Almost without exception, the circulation gainers are the nation's smallest daily newspapers, which tend to focus almost all of their limited resources on highly local news that is not covered by larger outside organizations. Also, these papers tend to have a lock on local ad markets.”
It added, “Online, newspapers are still a success – but only in readership, not in profit. Ads on newspaper internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their ink-on-paper cousins.
The Post’s comments are interesting. Conventional web wisdom is that newspapers, lambasted as “old media,” were ridiculed as dinosaurs who were too slow to adapt to the internet and now have the nerve to want to start charging for the editorial they gave away do for so long.
But in reality most newspapers were quick to adapt to the internet and the most-read news sites on the web are mostly newspaper sites.
But newspapers were gulled by web world wizard’s who predicted that if newspapers sites were free, huge traffic would be generated and this in turn would attract the big bucks from advertisers eager to cash in on the ever expanding websites.
But nobody apparently told the advertisers. They failed to come to the party.
To repeat what the Washington Post says, “Ads on newspaper internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their ink-on-paper cousins.”
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