SFN report: Newspapers overly dependent on real estate, automotive and recruitment classifieds

Posted by Erina Lin on June 2, 2010 at 9:36 PM

In general, newspaper companies remain overly dependent on the "Big Three" classified advertising categories of real estate, automotive and recruitment advertising, according to Borrell Associates. Their struggles to develop Internet revenues can be tied directly to their dependence on these categories, all of which have experienced a catastrophic free-fall over the past eight years, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

In 2000, newspaper print classifieds peaked at US$19.6 billion. Last year they were half that, at $9.9 billion. The development of online classified verticals hasn't come close to making up the difference. Last year, newspapers generated about $2.4 billion in online revenue from classified advertising categories, only about 25 percent of their annualised losses in print, according to Borrell.

Overall, newspapers remained most dependent on recruitment advertising through participation in programmes such as CareerBuilder, HotJobs or their own helpwanted Web offering. The average newspaper site generated slightly less than half its online revenue from the recruitment category, down from 60 percent just two years ago. Real estate and automotive were responsible for an average of about 11 percent each. The numbers vary by circulation size, according to the report, World Digital Media Trends 2009, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.