Things are already bad enough at your local newspaper’s office with subscriptions continuing to fall and the print ad revenue falling right along with it. Now from a blog post at Newsosaur, we see that newspapers aren’t keeping up with the growth in digital advertising.
All along the idea has been that local newspapers could offset the fall in print advertising revenue by selling more digital advertising.
The numbers so far don’t add up, as the drop in print is greatly outpacing the growth in digital. And the graph above puts it even greater perspective as it compares the overall growth rate for digital revenue with the growth rate for digital at newspapers.
To be fair, it would almost be impossible for a newspaper to keep pace, as a percentage of growth, because every year there are so many new ways to advertise digitally, think Groupon. However, not counting percentages, the dollar amount increase in revenue for newspapers is pretty bland and certainly doesn’t make anyone feel good about their long term survival in print and or digital.
If you have a five year strategy for local advertising, make sure you’re not counting to heavily on local newspapers to carry your message to consumers in print or online.