The Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism has released more bad news for print newspapers. Before long, digital advertising will surpass that of newspapers and magazines, and will surpass that of television by 2016. Never in history has a segment of advertising revenue grown at such a rapid rate, but the bad news is that traditional media organizations are struggling to win their share. According to eMarketer, in 2009 the five largest digital companies collected 63 percent of online advertising in the United States, last year the share rose to 72 percent. In just three years, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and AOL increased their revenues by $3,5 billion, leaving newspaper websites with nothing but crumbs.
The real problem is that while the big search engines make the profiles of their users available to advertisers, thus allowing advertising to reach only people interested in a certain product, newspaper concessionaires still aim for a traditional collection, which is aimed at all connected users without distinction. It is the common opinion of experts that only advertising aimed at specific targets has a future on the web and this explains the obsession of Google and Facebook for any information concerning our private life, our tastes and those of our friends.
But according to Ken Doctor, author of "Newsonomics", an interesting book on the future of information, there is hope. It suffices to study carefully how the Wall Street Journal is inserting advertisements in its tablet edition to understand that even newspapers can take important steps forward to improve their economic accounts. The WSJ's advertising applications are completely interactive and allow the reader to learn more about the offers made by the advertiser. If an investment plan is offered, it will thus be possible to analyze comparative tables, statistics and analyzes on the trend of the global economy. If the state of Virginia wants to communicate that it is the best place to open a business, in the application it will be possible to make a comparison with the proposals of other states, listen to a short speech by the governor, watch videos.
It's a little more complicated and tiring than putting a traditional notice or commercial online, but right now there don't seem to be many other valid alternatives: the five digital giants will also gobble up everything they can in the future and the competition in the leftovers market will be increasingly tough.
