Friday, June 15, 2007

all the ads shit to print

Publishing 2.0 has a very good analysis today of the New York Times ad numbers and how print ads are down by double-digits year-to-year and while web ads are up, they're not up up.

It's an astounding analysis when you really dig through the numbers, and it paints a pretty clear picture that while things are down in print ad-wise and things are up on the web ad-wise, the two don't come close to balancing out. According to Scott Karp's read on the numbers, print ad sales in May 2006 vs May 2007 declined by $19 million while online ad revenue rose by only $3 million (a 21.4% jump, but still).

Those numbers don't spell an easy future for the Times, or for anyone looking to make a painless transition from print to web. Sure, I'd give my right eye for that $3 million in ad revenues, but they've got to be digging through a lot of couch cushions trying to locate the $16 million they just lost.

NOTE: I'm not used to reading numbers in the millions (oh independent publishing!), and thusly an earlier version of this post erroneously reported the numbers wrong. It also included a funny joke about interns and coffee.

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