Newspaper Revenues Online

[Keyword: onlinejournalism]. Vin Crosbie over at Rebuilding Media reprints his speech on newspaper revenues online - well-informed stuff; here's a key quote or two:

"American newspapers are earning significant revenues online, particularly now
that local advertisers are going online. However, newspapers are in danger of
losing local online advertising revenues, not to TV or radio stations but to
'pure-play' Internet competitors such as Google and Yahoo. And that newspapers
must their expand their online advertising focus well beyond just the
traditional classified advertising categories of jobs, properties, and
automotive, because those three categories account for just a fraction of the
monies advertisers are spending online."

"More U.S. households now have Internet access than purchase daily newspapers."

"The average persons who visits a newspaper website visits almost eight times per month. He reads more than 45 newspaper webpages and spends more than 40 minutes on newspaper websites each month.

"Some surveys report that 40 percent of those 50 million persons are people who never read printed editions of newspapers.

"'pure play' Internet companies, such as Google and Yahoo, earned more than half of all online advertisement spending during 2005: Almost nine billion dollars. Almost 53 percent of all online advertisement spending in the United States.

"Newspapers however earned most of the local online spending by advertisers: a 41 percent share.

"Nevertheless, the 'pure play' Internet companies captured nearly a 32 percent share of local spending. Google, Yahoo!, and companies of that type are now in the local advertising business."

You can also find coverage of the issue at Cyberjournalist.net, who in turn report on coverage by AdAge...