WatchMojo.com blogs - Print ad sales hit 10-year low

31 Aug 2007

related tags: Stat of the Day | Newspapers | Online Advertising |

I have no idea who Alan D. Mutter is, but I stumbled onto his site and his post, Print ad sales hit 10-year low, is damning for print media:

After six straight quarters of accelerating declines, newspaper print advertising sales in the first half of this year fell to the lowest level in a decade, according to statistics released today by the Newspaper Association of America.

Print revenues in the first six months of this year totaled $20.3 billion, the lowest since the $19.7 billion in sales recorded in the first half of 1997. Print ad sales in the first half of this year were 8.3% below the depressed level recorded in the same period in 2006.

Although the NAA touted a 19% increase in online ad sales to $796 million in the second quarter of the year in a spin-rich press release on the eve of the Labor Day weekend, print ad sales represented a bit more than 93% of the industry’s total volume of $22.49 billion in the first half of the year.

It’s also, I think, a sign of things to come for TV companies. Read more on that here:

- Understanding TV executives Angst and Envy
- Web Video Represents $150B market cap in 2011, but not for TV companies
- Digital Revenues are Never Incremental for Old Media
- Will TV companies face same fate at Print Companies?
- If You’re Old Media, What Would You Do?
- Vint Cerf is Latest TV Bogeyman (That’s a compliment)