Newspapers Remain Important
The death of the daily newspaper is not going to happen any time soon.
According to research from Scarborough, 74% of American adults either read the newspaper or visit a newspaper web site at least once per week. That correlates to 171 million Americans.
The higher the income, the more likely that they are to read a newspaper. 84% of college grads read a newspaper and 82% of those earning more than $100,000 read a paper or its web site.
Newspaper web sites are gaining in population. From 2004 to 2009, the total unique audience for online newspapers grew from 41 million to 72 million. Today, 42% of all American internet users access an online version of the newspaper, according to Nielsen Online.
Unfortunately, advertising revenues are dropping far quicker than print circulations have dropped. In fact, print ad revenues dropped from $22 billion to $ 12 billion from the first half of 2005 to 2009. That’s a 45% decrease in ad revenues–three times that of the circulation decline.
It would seem as though newspapers were actively selling their online audience to advertisers. Unfortunately, online revenues for newspapers represent only 10% of its total revenues.
