Why are classifieds ‘print revenue’?
Online revenue accounts for about 10 percent of revenue at The New York Times, we keep reading. Classifieds for roughly 30 percent.
But many classified advertisers view the web component as equal to (or in some cases greater than) the print component. So why not evenly split the revenue between print and online or, if you want to be arbitrary, apply it to online? Suddenly, ‘online revenue’ is one third to one half of total revenue.
Changing the accounting method is more than semantics. Doing so focuses strategy where it belongs: On the future, instead of the past. We know people are willing to buy online-only classifieds, but where’s the evidence people would buy print-only ads now, or certainly in the future?
In the final analysis, accounting probably doesn’t matter. Survival of newspaper classifieds is far from certain, and the more time and money papers sink into them, the less time and money they have for preserving news. If papers don’t start to choose one over the other, they might end up with neither.
Tags: Classifieds
