Online newspaper advertising jumps 21%
The four or five owners of major newspapers with websites really took a bundle of cash home in quarter three, with a growth of 21.1 percent to $773 million compared with the same period of time last year.
Since the NAA started reporting online ad spending in 2004 the figures have continued to grow, grow and grow for - believe it or not - fourteen quarters in a row. The print papers, with advertising spending dropping off in huge sums, must be giving the online industry the envious eye right now as they pick up all the cash that wasn’t spent in the dying print industry.
What does this mean? Papers who are still print papers should jump ship now. Not only is there more money, but when a ubiquitous distribution system is in the hands of almost everyone you might want to distribute to, it’s simply irresponsible to continue running printing presses and contributing to an already dire environmental situation.
To anyone who still prints media: get online, now. Whether you’re Rupert Murdoch or grandma, I don’t care; the money is online. The responsible thing to do is to get online. I don’t know how much more clearly it can be said!
Are newspapers themselves becoming less of a source for the public and more of a source for gatekeepers who do not stick to a corporate bias? I’d love to see some comparative ad spending data, since in the end it’s all a matter of economics and if sites like Boing Boing, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon can continue to filter the mainstream media’s content the average individual gets to read more great content in less time.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
[...] weekly newspaper is the main student organ for Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. This public [...]
November 12th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
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