paidContent - NAA: Total Newspaper Ad Revenues Drop 29 Percent; Online Falls 16 Percent
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Newspaper company profits may have rebounded somewhat in Q2, but the Newspaper Association of America’s latest study show revenues continued to slump significantly. In total, combined print and online revs sank 29 percent to $6.8 billion from last year’s $9.6 billion. Online presented no respite, as the category fell 15.9 percent to $653 million. Not surprisingly, given the state of the economy, classifieds were the hardest hit subcategory of all, dropping a whopping 40 percent from Q208.
Since the downturn in newspaper advertising last year, the NAA has tended to be fairly quiet when posting its quarterly numbers. This time, NAA President and CEO John Sturm felt the need to provide some statement of hope. He turned away from the numbers themselves—which he conceded were not unexpected—and instead focused on recent Nielsen Online numbers showing that one-third of all internet users visited a website in Q2. But for the most part, Sturm could only offer a vague confidence that the economy will eventually turn around and with it, so will newspapers and their websites.
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By David Kaplan