Marketing Pilgrim has a great write up today that covers a study on newspaper websites and the revenue/profit they generate.
A study by Borrell Associates found that almost all newspaper web sites are profitable - thanks to online advertising. Advertising revenue accounts for over half of revenues locally, and 57.3 percent, goes to online advertising like Google.
They studied 3,100 sites owned by newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and independents to find out where they are making the most ad revenues.
According to Borrell, there are some important “firsts” in the newspaper industry. For the first time, newspaper online local ads topped more than $2 billion. Also, web sites of the biggest newspapers have switched from print or radio ad revenue to more than half of their revenues coming from non-print advertisers.
This is interesting to me because a lot of folks I’ve worked with in the past have tried to convince me that newspapers were doomed both online and off. I’ve never bought in to this, however, and I’ve always believed that newspapers would eventually evolve in to profitable web properties.
Also interesting with regards to the study is the numbers on print revenue/profits. From the original study:
“We expect revenue for print directories to decline more than any other local medium — 39% — over the next four years, from $12.7 billion this year to $7.7 billion by 2012.”
Better enjoy those crossword puzzles while you still can.
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Great site, Eric! I’ve added you to my daily-read feed.
Thanks, Jenn! This is where I feed a lot of my geek habits.
[...] This is interesting to me because a lot of folks I’ve worked with in the past have tried to convince me that newspapers were doomed both online and off. I’ve never bought in to this, however, and I’ve always believed that newspapers would eventually evolve in to profitable web properties…(Eric Odom, Freshy SEO) [...]