2010

2010

European publishers, rushing to develop ever glossier applications for Apple Inc.’s iPad, are turning to an old-fashioned prop for growth: the classified ad.

Hit by falling circulation as readers increasingly get their information from the Internet, publishers of newspapers and magazines are buying up online classified-ad sites, mostly for real estate, jobs and cars. The moves are aimed at regaining ground in an advertising market they once dominated and that has been taken over by websites where posts can be placed for free.

“The motivation to develop online classifieds is very strong,” said Alex DeGroote, a media analyst at Panmure Gordon in London. “Traditionally, classifieds were what supported the journalism.”

Germany’s Axel Springer AG, whose publications include “Bild” and “Die Welt,” and Norway’s Schibsted ASA, which puts out “Aftenposten” and “Dagens Medisin,” are among companies that have been on the prowl for such classified sites.

Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-17/friendly-publisher-seeks-readers-as-ipads-inspire-hunt-for-web-classifieds.html

2010

The Wall Street Journal posted this great infographic examining the habits of online newspaper readers by device type throughout the day.

From: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703326204575616310040096840.html?mod=e2tw

2010

The new Republican leaders in congress have shown little appetite for passing a new law that would force internet service providers to adopt a position of “net neutrality,” which would ban them from discriminating between different types of content or services. Now, there seems to be new hesitation among European regulators as well.

At a conference in Brussels, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes indicated there’s not much interest in new regulation over net neutrality in Europe. Her comments Thursday were her first on the issue in several months, and, together with those out of Washington in recent days, suggest that there won’t be any legislation regarding net neutrality—on either side of the Atlantic—for at least several months.

Full article: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-europe-is-holding-off-on-net-neturality-for-now/

2010

When News Corp. put The Times of London and Sunday Times behind paywalls, everyone was fully expecting a massive hit to both publication's traffic. Now we know how bad the traffic hit was, as noted in Eric Schonfeld's "The Times UK Lost 4 Million Readers To Its Paywall Experiment."  But the bigger story for advertisers is that News Corp. doesn't care, or at least not that much. Why? Because despite a massive hit in traffic, according to some simple math (which Schonfeld does a great job laying out), News Corp.is making a lot more money off a much smaller number of people paying for the content than they ever had from online advertising.

So here is what marketers are realizing: Online advertising is broken, so publishers of premium content will be forced to continue to focus on revenue driven through subscription services, and would-be advertisers will have to make do with whatever scraps of content/audience happen to be left.

Full article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=139237