Online advertising company Seek has posted exceptional results which do not augur well for newspaper advertising. Today’s Australian Financial Review carries the story (pg 11) and quotes Seek Director Matt Rockman claiming 31% growth in online employment advertising versus a 6% decline for print media in the same category.
While publishers can and will replace this lost revenue by playing in the online space, their traditional supply chain faces more complex challenges. We either need to find new products and services to offer or create product which we control. Focusing on new products and or services carries the risk of being beholden to suppliers. It would be unlikely that newsagents (in their current structure) would be a key channel for any new product and or service of significant value. Therefore, my attention would be on creating products and or services which we own.
The advertising shift reflected in the Seek results will continue as will the greater influence of mobile devices in producing access to newsagent information. These changes go to the core traffic generators of newsagencies. The successful newsagents will be those who have already started building elsewhere to replace the traffic and build relevance.