Unbeknown to the average consumer there is a war raging within the world of advertising. The battle of news services vs. search services is intense. I just wonder if print will suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.
For the past several years traditional news agencies both offline and online have been loosing ground to search engine aggregation. Why buy or go to USAToday online when you can go to Yahoo! or Google and search a neatly organized aggregate of the latest news regarding all topics imaginable and from virtually any source (within reason)? It’s not practical. Unless you are in love with one of the reporters you are better off going to the aggregator.
Print news has been loosing money and it looks like online divisions are under fire too. Recently New York Times print ad revenue slid 3.8 percent across all of its properties for the month of August, as reported against the same in 2005. The New York Times Media Group, its core property reported a slide of 4.2 percent. The online divisions haven’t faired that well either. The New York Times has seen a 10.2 percent decrease in the rate of growth when comparing July and August 2006 against their 2005 counterparts. Don’t think you are safe just because you work in the online division. More>>
