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Newspaper Print Ads Decline

As more and more people, prefer to read news online than in print, newspaper advertisement has been popular these days in the internet.

New figures from the Newspaper Association of America affirm this as newspapers’ online ad revenues increased by 19.3 percent to a boost of 796 million dollars, which is its thirteenth successive quarterly rise. On the other hand, print ad revenues fell from 10.5 billion dollars in the first quarter to 9.8 billion in the second quarter of this year.

As online ad revenues drop, it would not also be surprising to find total ad expenditures down to about 1 billion dollars or 8.6 percent in the same quarter of 2006. Being a sharp drop of revenues, questions now hound the newspaper sector whether online ad revenues will be able to make up for what was lost in the newspaper print ad revenues and still be able to pay for content creation costs.

Meanwhile, figures point to a steadily growing online newspaper audience, with reports saying that the growth is twice the rate of the overall web audience.

Nielsen//NetRatings, as released by the Newspaper Association of America, further reveals that people visiting these places online have higher incomes, thus, having the financial capacity to shop online.

The report also discloses relevant findings that the newspaper sector clearly cannot just ignore. It shows that an average of 59 million people a month or 37.6 percent of active web consumers visits online newspaper sites in the first quarter of this year.

The year 2006 did not fail to show the same results. A 5.3 percent increase in the first quarter of that year, especially when compared to the overall growth of web users at 2.7 percent, is highly noted.

Also, it is worth noting that 88.1 percent of newspaper website visitors have at least made one purchase online in the last six months. This result reflects the social status of 78.9 percent of internet users this year.

In the United Kingdom, a similar decline in newspaper ad revenues is felt by the print ad sector. This was confirmed by a study conducted by the Heather Hopkins at Hitwise, an authority in internet marketing and media research in the UK. The study stressed that UK newspaper sites were most visited in April 2007 having a rating of 19 percent, which has actually been consistent for online newspapers. Print media lags behind by two percent at 17 percent annually.

Just this year, one for every 24 web consumers visits online newspaper sites with the BBC, an international UK-based website at 15.45 percent.

Stats like these have triggered executives from all over the internet sector to project that in the next five years, newspapers could become obsolete. Most prominent of these executives is Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft Corporation who added that newspaper subscriptions decline because people choose to read news in the internet.

This is indeed a dim view of print media’s future. Yet still, IAB reports point that this may not be so. On March of the previous year, UK online newspaper ads spending overtook newspaper ad spending for the first time at 41 percent and with the surge of newspaper advertising spending by 0.2 percent.

On the last note, newspaper ads may suffer from a present decline, but studies like the last one show otherwise. Newspaper print advertising may as well just be in a growth phase.