Newspapers and the Internet and Ads

Posted December 23, 2008 at 23:58 PM

ronlargent

Let’s face it, if you have been a real estate agent over the past decade you have spent money on newspaper advertising

. Even if it did not work, it made you clients happy to see their home in the paper and gave the illusion of momentum towards a sale.

But then came this thing called the internet. It had websites that actually conveyed what the house was like besides 4bdrm,2.5b,garage, well you get the idea. Now we could show them pictures in color and video, have room for actual paragraphs and real information.

But to hear those in the newsroom they are being robbed of their birthright. What they forget is that you as the advertisers bought products that essentially did not work. They were a tool to add to your sales presentation because the customer thought they did.

Now, the consumer does not look in the Sunday paper for homes to buy, they go to the internet. That also goes for much of the advertising that goes on.

Back when I worked for a newspaper I was told, the editorial department works to create material so that people will be buying the advertising we sell. Those who did the writing scoffed at it, but you know what, they were right.

Now this lesson has come home to roost. We love to read the newspaper but it was the advertising that paid the bills.

The real revelation of the Internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership – it has in fact expanded it – but how it has sapped newspapers’ economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper’s revenues and more than half its profits. Classified advertisers didn’t desert newspapers because they disliked our political coverage or our sports sections, but because they had alternatives. Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers’ market share a few years ago. What they didn’t wipe out, the tanking economy did. During the first half of 2008, print classified advertising nosedived more than 25 percent, as withering job, real-estate and auto listings erased $1.8 billion in revenue from newspaper companies’ books. Newspapers have been uniquely hurt – television never had classifieds to lose. from Wired.com.

From Tom Royce in www.realestatebloggers.com