news, advertising, recession
March 18, 2009, 11:58 am
departing time inc. dude jim kelly says:
“The idea that the price of advertising would slowly creep up enough on the web that it would be a profitable business is obviously turning out to be not anywhere near the case.”
i’m not saying i know how to fix journalism, but this is something that has bothered me about the conclusion that journalism absolutely cannot survive on online advertising alone. true online ad rates are much lower than print rates right now, and true, they aren’t growing as fast as publications need them to.
BUT did we forget we’re in the worst recession since the dawn of the internet? are people seriously drawing the conclusion that since online ad sales are horrific right now, it means they will be horrific forever? i just think it’s not the best time to make assumptions about the long-term viability of business models. just saying is all.
I tend to think rates won’t get high enough anytime in the near future. There are too many places where people can get their news. Why pay X to advertise at washingtonpost.com when you can reach as many readers from the same demographic by paying X – Y on huffingtonpost.com?
i agree with that, too. i don’t think online advertising will be enough to sustain large-scale operations. i was just pointing out that we could be undervaluing online advertising by looking at what it’s pulling in right now. it’s too new and it’s growing in a completely unpredictable era.
What about converting web copy into a nicely digestible pdf format? Silver bullet!