ONLINE advertising, despite phenomenal growth over the past three years, is at least a decade away from catching up to newspapers, and a further five years from generating the revenues of commercial television.
This is the opening paragraph from a story in The Age (Melbourne, Australia Jan. 21) by Christian Catalano. The story quotes a report by Foad Fadaghi of the industry consultancy Frost & Sullivan .
I guess data can tell any story you require of it.
My concern with this report is that the industry is using it to say, hey, we’re okay, we’re okay. I guess if you repeat the mantra often enough you don’t need to plan for change.
If the report is accurate and balanced then why is News Corp. rushing online, why is Fairfax looking at more online purchases, why has PBL invested strategically in online. Newsagents, the people at the end of the newspaper food chain need to look at what the publishers are doing rather than what they are printing in their paper.