Print escalator bumps down a step
Newspaper Association of America (NAA) data released yesterday revealed a 9.4 percent overall decline in total print advertising revenue during 2007. Classified ad revenue fell by 16.4 percent, national advertising by 6.7 percent, and retail by five percent.
The previous worst plunge measured by the NAA was nine percent in 2001, when the dot.com bubble went pop. The decline in print revenues is markedly greater than the overall decline of 7.9 percent in national advertising expenditure, online included, caused by the economic slowdown.
‘Newspaper publishers are continuing to derive strong revenue growth from their increasingly robust web platforms,’ NAA president and CEO John Sturm whistled into the wind. Websites accounted for 7.5 percent of newspaper ad revenues in 2007, from 5.7 percent in 2006.
Slight tangent
In a related story, the venerable New York Times commented that although Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s videotaped response to President Bush’s State of the Union address drew little attention from print and TV reporters, it attracted 1.3 million hits when posted on YouTube.
The NYT suggested that the ‘professional filter’ provided by newspapers or news-specific websites like CNN.com is being replaced by the ‘social filter’ – traditional word-of-mouth vastly accelerated by the net – particularly among the under-30s.
Jane Buckingham, founder of market research company Intelligence Group, quoted a telling remark by a college student. ‘If the news is that important,’ he said, ‘it will find me.’
The new process may be working to reverse traditionally low levels of political participation among the young. Sixteen percent of voters in the recent California, Texas and Ohio Democratic primaries were under 30, from a low of under ten percent in 1994.
Or is it just Barack Obama’s charisma? The man has sparked youth enthusiasm not seen since Eugene McCarthy’s doomed ‘Children’s Crusade’ in 1968. The internet has made that enthusiasm far more infectious, and the multiplier effect can be seen in this, admittedly, often toe-curlingly self-conscious video made by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and other celebrities around Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ rallying call.
While its self-satisfaction and cooler-than-thou over-production wouldn’t look out of place in an Apple ad, it’s a hell of a lot more convincing party political broadcast than most, and is bound to appeal to ‘the kids’.
