Where's The Ad Market Headed Next Year? Nick Denton Offers Dire Prediction
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Gawker Media head Nick Denton specializes in shock effect. His latest pronouncement? Ad spending will drop 30 percent to 30 percent next year. Denton made the comments at a "doom and gloom" event that he hosted in New York last night. It's a far more morose forecast than what other pundits have been offering ---most analysts have been projecting relatively healthy single-digit online ad growth rates, Valleywag said the comments from Denton were part of a soon-to-be-published essay. So what's a publisher to do? Here's Denton's advice:
-- Avoid categories not directly hospitable to advertisers: politics is out. Vallewag notes that like Wonkette, Gawker Media may spin-off Consumerist, which is considered less friendly to marketers.
-- Lower those bandwidth bills immediately: The piece suggests that Denton could be having a serious talk with his friend Kevin Ryan, the CEO AlleyCorp, who runs the content-delivery network Gawker Media uses about renegotiating that vendor contract.
-- Merge titles and move offshore: Valleywag's Owen Thomas tries to sound upbeat about the prospect of writing a column for Gawker or Gizmodo. From an office in Iceland. And perhaps with less compensation.
-- Devote more space to ads
By David Kaplan