The Newspaper Association of America says print revenue dropped 28.6 percent earlier this year. Ad dollars spent on the platform will likely be sent down the recycling bin with the unread news. Now, analysis from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that the internet is poised to eclipse newspapers as the second-largest U.S. advertisement market in the next few years, closely following television.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014 says consumers are increasingly moving toward digital platforms for shopping and research. The Wall Street Journal reports that the PwC study shows the internet was not immune to the recession, but it proved to be a viable platform for advertisements in even the most trying periods and its growth is predicted to continue.
PwC analysts expect the online ad business to reach $34.4 billion by 2013, up from $24.2 billion in 2009. This estimation does not include the online mobile advertising market, which is expected to quadruple from $414 million in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2014, relays the Journal.
At the same time, the study indicates the newspaper ad industry will see declines in the coming years as print readership goes down. PwC predicts newspaper advertisement revenue will drop to $22.3 billion by 2014, down from $24.82 billion in 2009. This comes simultaneously with reports that there is a strong growth in online news readership.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s study, the Future of News and Internet, says 5 percent of all internet visits are related to reading the news. Remember, in addition to paid searches, channels like Google News can be a good way to catch consumers’ interests and drive traffic to a website.
