From the Chicago Sun Times to the Rocky Mountain News, newspapers across the board are struggling with dwindling ad revenues. And it’s not just the recession. Rather, newspapers are just having trouble adapting their revenue model to moder times. While Craigslist has cut into their classifieds business, the sheer volume of information on the internet writ large has eroded their subscription base. All the while, increasingly net-savvy advertisers are opting for online channels over print pages because online they can get hard analytics on eyeballs, impressions, click-through, and conversions.
So it’s not just the recession. Indeed, as far back as 2006, the Economic Policy Institute reported that the non-internet publishing industry lost 91,000 jobs in 2006 alone, “in part due to internet competition.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean that all is lost for the print media. Granted, they’ve taken a beating because they weren’t quick enough in adapting to changing economic, technological, and information landscape. And the industry will probably have to take a few more knocks on the chin (losing a few more publications) before the fights over.
But at the end of the day, newspapers are in the business of (1) providing authoritative information so that they can (2) sell subscriptions and ads, and online technologies can only help them do that . In a recent Revenews post, Upgrading the Newspaper Revenue Model, I explored some ways that newspapers could (1) make paid subscriptions more appeal, and bolster their ad revenues by (2) increasing unique visits, (3) increasing page-views per visit, and (4) diversify their ad space offerings so as to attract more advertiers. My suggestions included:
- Localize Ads: use geo-targeting and LBS to open up their ad space to smaller businesses with lower ad budgets.
- Social News Organization: both offer subscribers an added-value experience and leverage social media to drive traffic; but more importantly, gather comprehensive user-data in the process.
- Hyper Target Ads: with the user-data they collect, newspapers could both better target their ads and show users relevant affiliate offers whenever an ad space isn’t already sold.
- Go Mobile: through a comprehensive mobile service, newspapers could drive traffic through mobile updates, and further diversify their ad offerings and reach out to users via LBS/GPS.
There’s much more detail in the original post, but the point is that newspapers are so much more than mere content publishers. They play an important role in our democracy, so there is a lot more hinging on their survival than mere jobs and tradition. Through the strategic use of online technologies (both mobile and ad technologies), they can not only prop-up their revenue model, but continue to be the watchdog on government and business that they’re supposed to be.
In any case, here’s somewhat of a video obituary from the Rock Mountain News, which ran its last edition on February 27th, 2009. It’s an extremely well done video, and is so sad because, as one of their columnists put it, the “paper won four Pulitzers since 2000, but couldn’t weather economic storm.”
Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.
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Good information.
In the present economic situation if you are looking to get your message across to people and advertising your business without spending loads of money, then you can opt for traditional outlets like print advertising agencies. These agencies can offer you classified ad space at special discounts. This is also a great opportunity especially if you are setting up a new business or are tight on your advertising budget.
When you use a professional ad agency, you tend to receive an early notice of the special offers and prices and also a considerable reduction in the advertising rate for national press. So help your business grow by promoting it in the low priced publications. Use print media to cut your costs and boost your advertising efforts in this growing economic recession.