from New York Times: Many newspapers have been ailing as readers defect to other sources of news and as advertisers seek new ways to attract potential customers. The biggest challenge, by most accounts, comes from Web sites and search engines like Google and Yahoo.
Both companies reported revenue last week that surpassed Wall Street’s expectations. Yahoo, for instance, reported $672 million in ad revenue for the first quarter after subtracting payments to sites that display its ads – a 50 percent increase over the first quarter of last year.
“You hear a lot about the 30-second commercial; the culture is saying that it’s not worth what it once was,” said Mark DiMassimo, an advertising executive in New York. “The national newspaper plan is the 30-second commercial of the print world. It’s not just that untargeted advertising looks old-fashioned. It’s that there are increasingly viable, more finely targeted and cost-effective ways to advertise.”
Local newspapers are meeting that need, for example, with products like ad inserts that can be delivered according to ZIP codes, said Jeff Piper, vice president and general manager for Carat Press, a print media planning and buying agency. “The national papers have never attracted the insert business, but that is the fastest growing segment of the industry,” he said.
