Drop in Real Estate Newspaper Advertising

Adding to the earlier story about newspapers losing money, look at this chart, from the Trulia Blog, another of those sites I mentioned that's killing the papers' classifieds business.

Ouch! Trends in Newspapers and Real Estate Advertising

Can Newspapers Be Saved? Here Are Some Ideas...

Building on the Newspaper discussion begun the other day, Search Engine Land has an article asking the question Can Newspapers Be Saved and how? The gist of it is:

1. This is the standard one we always hear. Advertiser relationships are the biggest asset for newspapers (just as they as for yellow pages), so they must defend those relationships and extend them, acting as trusted resources to provide a broad base of advertising products.
2. Sell everything your advertisers want. Not just newspaper, but IYPs (YellowPages.com, SuperPages and Dexknows are mentioned) and other local Internet traffic sources like CitySearch.
3. Focus on phone calls. As we've discussed here, most advertisers are not focused on directing clicks and traffic to their websites, except as it drives phone calls. Their sites are typically not optimized for conversion and they are not set up to do rapid responses to emails, so just skip the middle man and send the phone calls directly.

Everything else in here has to do with sales. Invest in your team, keep it easy to sell (this is a key - package products together rather than making it a complicated sale that seems like you're nickle and diming them), and make sure your sales comp is aligned with the new product set.

Sounds like pretty good advice. Will newspapers take it? That's another story...


Can Newspapers Be Saved? Part 2: Potential Solutions

Newspaper Ad Revenues Dropping Fast

I don't post too much about newspapers here, but they are a large (though shrinking) and important part of the local advertising ecosystem. I've argued for a while that, while yellow pages companies are in a tough position, newspapers are even worse off. Why is that? Because they face a lot more competition and on different factors compared to YPs. Any local blogger can cover local news (sometimes better than the big papers, especially when you're talking about a neighborhood or smaller area). They can go deeper on topics, have a better understanding of the day-to-day life in an area and, most importantly, they can be more timely with their news delivery. While newspapers publish once a day (and their online schedules are not that much more frequent), bloggers publish anytime. And via blog readers and other notification channels, interested people can know the news as soon as it happens. While this will impact other local players, like radio and TV, the biggest impact is in the newspaper industry. Yellow Pages obviously face significantly new media competition as well, but it's not as likely that one person in their house will provide the same competition for YPs that they provide for newspapers.

So what's the point of all this? According to the Newspaper Association of America (via Techcrunch), newspaper advertising revenues have been dropping off a cliff. Not only that, but their Internet revenues are decreasing as well. Most people I know think we're in a recession and advertising is bound to drop off as a whole. But it definitely looks like newspapers are taking the brunt of it (though the YPs are not exactly feeling good either). Classified ads, one of the big revenue areas for newspapers, have been eaten away for a while now, by Craigslist and vertical sites like Rent.com, Realtor.com, Monster.com and the like. But now it seems like display is following, and it's just going to keep going down from here.

Negative Momentum: Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Speed (Even Online Is Declining)

WSJ Discusses Borrell Local Report

The WSJ discussed the Borrell report I mentioned yesterday, although focusing on it from a newspaper perspective. The long and short of it is that they say newspapers are trying to train their sales forces to sell online ads, but when they do that, they cannibalize print (which as we know is higher priced and higher margin). Craigslist is eating their lunch on Classifieds, Google and others are taking share of local traffic and they are having a tough time. Doesn't sound good...

Newspapers Think Locally for Online Ads - WSJ.com