August 2009 Archives

"Why Don't Teens Tweet?" has become a popular question in the past few months. According to the New York Times last week, only 11 percent of Twitters are teens, TechCrunch reported.

11 percent seems a small number, but actually it has a higher concentration of teens compared to Facebook, with only 9 percent of user being teens, which means Twitter is more teen friendly than Facebook.

Elauwit Media, the publisher of The Sun and Telegram newspapers in Philadelphia, was the fastest growing newspaper publisher in the U.S., according to an Inc. magazine list of the country's fastest growing businesses, The Marlton Telegram reported last week.

The media company sat at 1,577 out of the 5,000 companies listed, 48^th in the Philadelphia region and 20^th in media company ranks. Elauwit was the only newspaper publisher to enter the media company top 20.

U.S. newspaper publishers marked a 29 percent decline of their print and online advertising revenue in the second quarter, which is steeper than the previous period, according to the data from Newspaper Association of America, Bloomberg reported.

Ad revenue was down from $9.6 billion in the first quarter last year to $6.82 billion year-over-year, while ad sales fell 28 percent in the first quarter to $6.62 billion.

Global mobile advertising spending, according to eMarketer, is expected to grow from $2.7 billion in 2007 to over $19.1 billion in 2012, SFN's Winning Mobile Strategies reported.

Global mobile text message advertising spending will grow from $2.56 billion in 2007 to $14.17 billion in 2012, while mobile display advertising will grow from $53 million to $1.2 billion, and mobile search will expand from $83 million to $3.77 billion in the same period.

"The news industry has so far failed to make the digital transition," according to veteran industry analyst Ken Doctor in the new Outsell report "Top 15 U.S. New Companies Print-to-Digital Market Size and Share," MediaPost reported.  

According to Doctor, newspapers only made 11 percent of their overall revenues from digital sources, including both advertising and circulation, in 2008. Even the best performers in the industry, the Washington Post Co. and News Corp., marked quite low proportions of online revenue in the overall profits (15 percent and 14 percent, respectively).

According to new projections from Juniper Research, worldwide mobile Internet ad spending is expected to grow fourfold over the next five years, mostly fueled by emerging markets. However, it will still account for a small portion of all advertising dollars for the foreseeable future, GigaOM reported.

Mobile Web ad revenues worldwide will jump to nearly $2 billion by 2014 from $500 million this year, thanks to surging traffic from markets such as India and China, where fixed-line Internet access is limited, according to Juniper. The overall mobile ad market, including online as well as text ads, Bluetooth-based campaigns, etc., is expected to increase at a similar pace, up from $1.4 billion this year to $6 billion in 2014.

The Nichi Bei Times, the oldest Japanese American paper in Northern California, announced last week that it will shut down after the final edition on September 10, 2009, SF Ethnic Communities Examiner reported.

The paper, since 1990, has suffered a continuous decline in both circulation and advertising revenue, just like any other players. According to the Nichi Bei Times, the closedown is due to the growth of online news, changing audiences and the economic downturn, and so it would consider new business models. "We felt the traditional bilingual daily did not serve today's Japanese American community," said Board of Directors of the publication on its website. "Japanese media have been hit harder than many other ethnic media."

U.S. national community advertising network LocalPoint Media will launch a Web site collecting preprints, coupons and savings specials on October 1, Editor & Publisher reported.

The site, called Zip2Save.com, is a product of the group's partnership with Metroland Media Group, which has a similar site in Canada, at flyerland.ca.

The top two U.S. movie theatre chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun to cut the listings on newspapers, showing the movie schedules at local theatres, according to Huffington Post.

In most cases, theatres need to pay newspapers to print that information. They are now, in order to cut costs, directing consumers to their Web sites or third-party sites, such as Fandango, Moviefone or Flixster. These third-party sites charge no fees for posting listings, but make money from the advance-sold movie tickets. Many of them also feature film critics and movie trailers.

Fairfax Media Ltd., Australia's second-largest newspaper publisher, reported a net loss in the six months ended in June, after it wrote down the value of its mastheads due to advertising revenue declines, Bloomberg reported.

The net loss after impairments, significant items and tax totaled A$14.7 million ($12.3 million), versus a profit of A$190.9 million in the same period last year, according to spokesman Frank Sufferini. 

Norwegian media company Schibsted ASA announced its second quarter earnings lower than expected, and stated that its printed classified ads markets would still be impacted by the depressing economy, Reuters reported.

Earnings before interest, tax and amortisation totalled 218 million crowns ($36.25 million) in the period from April to June, down from 365 million one year ago. The figures easily beat the average forecast of 114 million crowns according to a Reuters poll of 10 analysts.

Guardian News & Media announced Tuesday that it would immediately drop the "bulk sales", which targets hotels and airlines for a nominal fee, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian will abandon 12,000 bulks, or 3.9 percent of its monthly sales according to Audit Bureau of Circulations.

According to IDATE and data from operators and national regulators, the United States reported £133 billion in telecom service revenues, the highest among all other countries surveyed in 2007. Japan ranked second with £50.4 billion, SFN's Winning Mobile Strategies reported.

In terms of telecom revenues per capita, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada are in the top three with more than £430.

West Australian Newspapers Holdings Ltd. reported full-year profit down 21 percent due to declining advertising revenue, Bloomberg reported Friday.

In the 12 months ending June 30, net income dropped to A$87.2 million (US$73 million), versus A$109.9 million one year ago. Revenue fell 11 percent to A$418.6 million, according to a company statement.

Two publications owned by the New York Times Co., The Santa Rosa Press Democrat and the affiliated weekly Petaluma Argus Courier, are going to cut payroll by 10 percent next year, in order to "bring costs in line with lower ad sales," said Publisher Bruce Kyse Tuesday.

According to the Santa Rosa paper, the cutbacks could include pay cuts, buyouts, and, if needed, layoffs, said Kyse in a series of meetings with employees.

The shrinking online job market in the United States seems to be flat at about 3.23 million advertised job postings a month, according to a report released by the Conference Board, Information Week reported Monday.

Online advertised openings were 4.27 million in September, 2007. The market declined precipitously in December 2008 and January 2009, making the average number of advertised positions about 1.2 million less than 2008's monthly average of 4.5 million.

Dawson Holdings Plc, newspaper and magazine distributor in the UK, has sold assets to its competitors, Reuters reported.

Smiths News Plc and John Menzies announced it had invested 1.5 million pounds and 0.5 million pounds on Dawson's assets, respectively.