The past few years have witnessed the slow, painful decline of print media. The shift in focus to digital content has led to big drops in the audience for print media, which is taking its toll on print publishing around the globe.
The Global Newspaper Publishing Market is stagnating, with a CAGR of only 0.18 percent from now through 2018. The Global Magazine Publishing Market isn’t doing much better, barely eking out a 0.43 percent CAGR over the same period.
Loss of Advertising Revenue Disastrous for Newspapers and Magazines
Lower readership has severely truncated advertising revenues, which have traditionally provided the bulk of revenue in the industry.
In 2012, the revenue generated from advertising in the newspaper industry was US$86.95 billion, which accounted for 53.68 percent of total revenue in the market. This declined to just over 86 billion in 2013 and is expected to slump even more by 2018.
Average Time Spent by US Adults on Media Consumption
“Advertising revenue has declined severely in print because the medium is losing ground to online and television advertising. As a whole, consumers are spending less time reading newspapers, which is shifting advertising from newspapers towards other venues,” say senior TechNavio analysts.
Innovative Advertising Will Buoy the Market
Publishers in both the newspaper and magazine industries are finding new and innovative ways to advertise, in an attempt to cling onto their most lucrative source of income. Most notable among these new approaches are native and programmatic advertising.
Native Advertising
Native advertising, sponsored content…puff pieces. It is content that is paid for by a company, but has the look and feel of an editorial piece in order to match the form and function of the publication or medium (whether it’s print, digital, broadcast or otherwise) where it appears.
Native advertising is effective as it tends to be less intrusive but still catches the consumer’s attention. The ads are placed so they resonate with the readers’ interests or needs, for example, a “discount on tickets” ad on an online reservation website, or a sponsored article about wine pairings in a food and drink magazine.
It’s a bit of a moral grey area, and has met with criticism from the old school of journalism (even John Oliver has expressed some relatively strong opinions on the topic). But call it what you may, native advertising is a major driver that will increase advertising revenue in print media.
Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising takes the guess work (and chance of human error) out of advertising. It is an automated system that reduces the decision-making efforts of buyers, and decides on which ad to purchase and where to place it through real-time bidding. To make decisions regarding which ads to purchase, the system analyzes consumer data specific to the product or service for which the ad has to be bought or sold.
These new approaches to advertising in newspapers and magazines will help global publishing markets survive, if not thrive over the coming years.
