The U.S. newspaper industry received a jolt in the third quarter as combined print and online advertising revenue slipped 1.5 percent to $11.8 billion. The latest downturn in newspaper advertising revenue is largely due to the fact that automobile and help-wanted classified sales have been sluggish. The recent decline scripts the fact that for the first time combined print and online spending fell since the Newspaper Association of America started measuring the combined revenue in 2004.
The advertisement spending of print editions declined 2.6 percent to touch a mark of $11.1 billion, if compared with the corresponding month last year. On the other hand, online advertisement spending recorded a rise of 23 percent to $638 million to mark the double0digit increase in the 10th consecutive quarter.
In addition, the spending in the print classified section marks a fall of three percent to $4.1 billion. National advertising spending slipped drastically by 8.3 percent to touch $1.7 billion.
However, the real jolt came from the decline in help-wanted ads that recorded a fall of 10.1 percent to $1.1 billion and automotive advertisement, which slipped 11.7 percent to $968 million. To make the situation a little better real estate rose 10.5 percent to $1.35 billion.
If the over all recent trends are taken into consideration, it seems to be clear enough that online spending will constitute a major part of the total ad spending. The recent drop in revenue by no means can be dubbed as a trend since the recent efforts to sell ads to the newspaper by online giants will put a significant impact on newspaper ad revenue in the time to come.
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