More Ad Trouble At The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal

Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are having a rough go with traditional ad space revenues. Both companies blame less tech and financial ad spending. There is truth in this assertion. But the problem is deeper. The Internet is grabbing more and more ad dollars.

Paid Search is draining significant ad dollars from print. Also more and more people are getting their news and information online. This means that erstwhile ad dollars are moving not only to paid search, but also to traditional banner advertising on a variety of Web sites.

Do not be surprised if these venerable newspaper brands start to make certain economies in production to save money and help their respective bottom lines. I have pointed out how The Times of London recently changed to a tabloid format. I am sure this was a painful decision for News Corporation, but most likely Rupert Murdoch saw the reality of a losing battle and moved to cut costs. Thus my guess is that we are only a few years away from both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal making the same decision as The Times in England.

Newspapers will always be with us, but as more and more people use the Internet, newspapers are going to become smaller and smaller and will have to rely on Web traffic to work in tandem with the print editions in order to be economically viable. story