The big old newspapers are winning an increasing share of online advertising dollars. So much money is flowing to online media that high-traffic sites are running out of places to stick these (audio)visual pitches. And alternative weeklies are finally using web sites to gain readers. I’ll weave together those three bits as I explore the root of all media.


Old media web sites: Based on a report from Veronis Suhler Stevenson, one of the premier investment firms in the media business, a Financial Times article says that top-branded mass media, such as NY Times, Disney & Time Warner, are gaining market share in online advertising versus the Yahoos and Googles. The FT notes:

“VSS (reported) Tuesday in its annual comprehensive study of the media business that this year, of the $22bn expected to be spent on online and mobile advertising in the US, traditional media groups’ share is forecast to be 37 per cent, up from 23 per cent in 2000.”

Big media, of course, are racing to increase online ad share to offset secular decreases in print dollars.

Running out of space: Boy, advertisers must be throwing money at high-traffic sites. Yesterday I noted how big publishers were banding together to auction off the junk pages on their web sites (See third bit).

Today I pass on an a guest commentary from venture capitalist Baris Karadogan who wrote on VentureBeat that:

“two questions … are facing all online services. If the ad industry is to grow from $16B to $30B in 5 years, what will the new kinds of ads be and where are the new places to put them?”

Later, Karadogan notes that, ” for each person in the US, advertisers spend $2000/yr across all media, TV, magazines, direct mail etc.”

That’s a lot. By the way, VentureBeat is the brainchild of Matt Marshall the former San Jose Mercury News guy who started tracking VCs for the Merc online via the SiliconBeat blog and has now spun his project off. Good luck, Matt!

Alternative Weeklies Late to the Party? A Center for Media Research summary report suggests that free weeklies have been slow to get onto the web, or to figure out how to unite their web and print strategies. The writeup includes this paraphrase and quote from Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics : alternative weeklies didn’t immediately embrace websites “but most eventually became aggressive and achieved some very impressive gains.”