Both Facebook and Google reported huge earnings this week, as the digital ad market continues to boom.
David vs. Goliaths
As the tech giants scoop up an increasingly large share of the ad market, traditional channels are getting squeezed — and none are getting hit worse than newspapers. Data from Pew Research estimates that the daily circulation of US weekday newspapers hit an all-time-low last year of 24.3 million, way down on the 63 million daily circulation that was common back in the 1980s.
With falling readership, and of course no way of tracking advertising performance, it's no surprise that newspaper ad spending has declined every single year for 13 years.
Pivot... if you can
Some of the bigger US news properties have pivoted quite successfully to digital, but it's been a slow and arduous process. The NYTimes now boasts millions of digital-only subscribers, and last quarter they made up the majority of the company's revenue, but even for the NYTimes, print still makes up a whopping 40% of its total.
For small or local newspapers, making a huge investment into digital just hasn't been feasible — which is why it's no surprise that 1,800 local newspapers have closed down in the US since 2004. That number is only going to grow.
