When USA Today has double your circulation (1,900,000 v 900,000), you should get the message.
Posted on 10/25/2012 11:46:50 AM PDT by lbryce
For years, The New York Times Co. has been fighting a losing battle to replace its dwindling print advertising revenues with digital ones. So when an analyst singles out the results from a quarter as “shockingly weak,” you know that’s pretty bad.
That’s what happened Thursday morning on a conference call to discuss the publisher’s third-quarter earnings. The numbers were indeed somewhat grim: Total ad revenues for the company were down 8.9% from the same period in 2011, with both print and digital advertising falling.
Although circulation revenues rose 9.3%, largely on the strength of a successful program to charge for digital access to the Times, it wasn’t enough to offset the dismal ad-side performance. The result was a 60% drop in operating profit, to $8.5 million, and a loss from continuing operations of 2 cents per share.
Denise Warren, the company’s chief advertising officer, said the advertising struggles reflected a mix of cyclical issues and secular changes in the market.
On the cyclical front, she said, “You can write off the economy but we are hearing from business leaders that they are extremely concerned and the lack of business confidence is growing.”
But while that’s having a temporary effect on spending, the more serious problem may be the fact that the Times Co. just can’t compete effectively in the game of selling mass audiences to advertisers. Warren cited “an abundance of inventory” and “efficient buying methods such as programmatic buying” offered by Google and Yahoo as forces driving down ad rates.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
When USA Today has double your circulation (1,900,000 v 900,000), you should get the message.
Thanks. I needed a good laugh.
“...mix of cyclical issues and secular changes in the market.”
If you haven’t anything intelligent to say just babble something meaningless.
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