Newspaper Online Ad Revenue Surges 35%

Well, I am glad the newspaper industry is getting some positive news – especially as it relates to online. As I have been saying for a number of years already, newspapers need to start to shed their print heritage and focus on delivering their content digitally. As we have seen recently in Canada, CanWest pulling the plug on Dose Magazine, a free weekly magazine targeting a younger demographic – they are now moving purely digitally and I will bet will turn this publication from a loss to a gain on the income statement.

Some have said that I am anti-newspaper, but that was never the case, only that newspapers needed to evolve. Although, I am over 30-years old and proud of the fact that I have never had a newspaper subscription. That being said, the next couple of years are going to be exciting in the media business as more advertising shift their budgets online – watch the Internet advertising pie grow.

As reported yesterday by Eric Sass, ONLINE AD REVENUE AT NEWSPAPERS grew to $613 million in the first quarter–representing a 34.9 percent jump from the first quarter of 2005, according to a new report by the Newspaper Association of America.

The online increase marked the eighth consecutive quarter of growth, according to the organization. Last year, online ad revenue totalled $2.027, marking a growth of 31.48 percent from 2004.

Expenditures on print ads, by contrast, remained flat in the first quarter. Print ad revenues came to $10.5 billion, up .3 percent from the same time last year.

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