Ad dollars flow from papers to Web
It's now estimated that more than half of the $200-billion-plus U.S. advertising market will flow to online sites and away from newspapers. More folks are simply getting their news online. Jeremy Hobson reports.
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Scott Jagow: A new forecast predicts the online ad business will overtake its newspaper competition by 2011. Jeremy Hobson has more on that.
Jeremy Hobson: Perhaps the biggest surprise here is newspaper ad spending still beats Internet ad spending. But the forecast says that won't be the case much longer.
Veronis Suhler Stevenson Executive VP Jim Rutherfurd says it's all about changing habits in the way the news is consumed.
Jim Rutherfurd: So instead of reading a newspaper and spending maybe half an hour reading a newspaper or magazine, they're scanning headlines on the Internet and looking at stories and spending 10 or 15 minutes.
And web surfers get "targeted" ads, instead of ads that are meant to appeal to a broader audience. The report finds the trend away from mass marketed advertising is evident on TV as well — people are moving toward cable and subscription services, and away from broadcast TV.
Rutherfurd: The overall trend is where possible, they would rather pay and not have ads.
But don't shed any tears for the ad industry — the report says total ad spending will surpass $230 billion next year.
In Washington, I'm Jeremy Hobson for Marketplace.
