Newspaper Ad Sales – Surprise! – Plummet in Q1 2009
According to the Newpaper Association of America, Ad Sales plummeted nearly 30% in Q1, the largest change ever and the worst since 1985. Online ad sales did not fare any better, with online ad sales volume reducing to an amount not seen since Q1 2006.
Numbers like this clearly mean that ‘business as usual’ is not working. What is business as usual for newspapers?
From this seat, it appears that the advertising depression that is engulfing all media and resulting in first-time actual reductions in online ads, not just traditional print ads, is hitting the newspapers with both fists. This chart shows a steady stream of reduced revenues, while other charts show that readership of online papers is stable and in some cases growing.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from these trends is that by offering free online news, subsidized by cheap remnant display ads, the newspapers are slowly killing themselves. And they know it. Classified ads are clearly at the heart of this reduction in revenue, as better alternatives like Craigslist have developed a model that is at once both local – and national – without the need to pay an expensive sales force.
Techcrunch covers this story, noting that online ad sale are off too by 13% during the same time.
For some zeitgeist from techie type people, see Techcrunch’s comment section. It seems that some of the people there are starting to separate the concept of a news ‘paper’ from the concept of journalism and the distribution of news.
When I can get some more stats on news sites visitors as well as offline subscription #s I will post them.
