Where Do Advertisers Go When Newspapers Close?

May 05, 2009•Blog Posts•Newspapers•Print•Traditional Media• by author

Stacey A.

Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, stopped in at NYU the other week to talk about the strength of print journalism. She seemed optimistic about the future of her industry, saying, “Call newspapers dinosaurs if you like, but remember that dinosaurs roamed the Earth for millions of years.”

And while that’s a valid point, the dinosaurs had their day to roam the earth. But now, they’re extinct.

As it stands, newspapers across the country are scaling back production. Local papers are reducing service from five days a week to three, and the majority of papers are cutting down on jobs. So where are advertisers going now that newspapers are scaling back?

Medium components that indicated increasing ad revenue in the first quarter of 2006 were as follows: the Internet, up 16.7%; direct mail, up 4.5 %; magazines, up 4.1%; the yellow pages, up 2%; and cable TV networks, up 1.4%.” Notably absent from that list? Newspapers.

If the Internet was the future in 2006, then how is that panning out in today’s media market?

Pretty well, apparently. Autotrader.com announced that it received record traffic in March 2009 at approximately16 million unique hits, as opposed to the 14 million unique hits it received in February of 2009. The numbers make sense; people are turning to the Internet for information and news, and advertisers are capitalizing on this.

Digital media is another advertising medium that is on the rise. Search terms, which bolster the number of times a particular brand is shown in search results, were predicted to experience a growth of $1.7 billion in 2008.

Social networking, while already popular among the younger demographic, is experiencing a surge of popularity from businesses who realize its potential to reach out to customers via sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Mobile media is also incorporating these digital elements into a more personal branding experience, as more and more phones are becoming Internet capable. In terms of numbers, mobile media experienced a 30% jump in unique personal Internet users throughout the course of 2008.

These trends strongly suggest that new mediums are evolving, while the “newspaper dinosaur” is becoming increasingly more obsolete.