Ghost of Midnight

Newspaper ad spending tumbling… Online ad revenue ascending

Greg Sterling’s post today provided food for thought about online advertising…

U.S. newspapers are indeed in deep financial straights.  Here’s a chart from Newspaper Association of America data…

U.S. newspaper revenue from classified, local and national ads are all contracting rapidly, while their income from online ad sales is still tiny in comparison.  Total ad sales in 2006 was about $49 billion and in 2009… $27 billion.  Wow.  U.S. newspaper online ad sales has held at about $3 billion for the past four years.

However, stepping away from newspapers for a moment, online advertising overall is growing impressively.  Charts from eMarketer project U.S. digital ad spending raising steadily at 10-14% from 2009 to 2014.  Newspapers’ slice of that $25 billion pie is relatively narrow… only about $3 billion.

Will online ad spending continue to climb at this rate?  Will it come at the further expense of newspaper ad spending?  Does this Harris poll offer a clue?

People tell us they read the ads on Front Porch Forum… and our sponsors keep buying the space.  Hard to know where this is all headed… but I do know that we get lots of businesses knocking on our door.