When A Newspaper Stops Publishing In Print, What Happens To The Print Advertising Dollars?
For the most part, they simply go away. Sure if newspaper goes to an online venue only, they may pick up some of the larger ROP ads and convert them to online display or banner ads. They may also be able to maintain a classified advertising database that customers can buy into, but I think overtime, unless they have a tremendous product, they will lose those readership to larger national news sources and classified advertising sites like Craig’s List that run free ads. It’s hard to compete with that!
I own a media buying agency specializing in newspapers. Over the past few years, I have watched as newspapers have struggled to increase revenues by forcing online classified buys in conjunction with their print ad placement. Though I am not seeing their profit/loss reports, I do see how it effects our clients. When this happens, they often price themselves out of the budget of the client. National advertisers who are not limited to one market or another will almost always opt out of placement in markets who overcharge for classifieds due to the inflated rates of the newspaper’s online product of which the publisher overestimate the value.
In many cases the newspapers are putting themselves out of business, but I don’t see print going out altogether. Wise publishers who continue to provide good, quality news that their readers want and offer fair advertising rates will weather the storm and should not have to worry about losing their print advertising dollars!
With all the debate over the future of newspapers, here’s a question I haven’t heard anybody ask (much less answer): If a metropolitan newspaper suddenly ceased to publish, leaving the city with no newspaper, what would happen to all of that newspaper’s ad dollars? Most newspaper companies’ strategy right now is based on the assumption that you can’t shut down the print newspaper because it brings in 90% of the revenue, and you couldn’t possibly support the same news gathering operation with the 10% revenue slice that goes to the website. (The 10% problem) There’s just one problem with this assumption. All of the ad dollars that the print newspaper gets are, by definition, ad dollars that the newspaper’s website does NOT get. Think about that for a second. Newspapers know that they are competing with their websites for ad dollars. But newspapers are also essentially competing with their websites for survival. So what WOULD happen to those millions of dollars in advertising if there wer
