Advertising Digital Publishing
2 mins read

Print advertising is in decline, but advertisers not moving to digital

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Dr. Samir Husni is the founder and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media. He is also Professor and Hederman Lecturer at the School of Journalism. As Mr. Magazine™ he engages in media consulting and is one of the world’s most influential voices in global publishing.

In a blog post on his website, Dr Husni describes how earlier this week he took 16 of his students to meet with Todd Krizelman, CEO of MediaRadar. For those unaware, MediaRadar is a sales enablement platform that distills advertising data into insights used by agencies to prospect for new business. It analyses 3.1 million brands across multiple media platforms and its breadth and scope of knowledge is almost unparalleled.

During Krizelman’s presentation to the students, he stated that tens of thousands of print advertisers had stopped buying print in the first four months of 2018. So the logical question is this: Where has this ad spend gone?

His reply:

Of the 87,943 advertisers that stopped placing in print in 2018, 7,467 (8%) instead ran a digital campaign in 2018 during the same time period (Jan-Apr). 92% of the 87,943 stopped buying altogether.

Other key takeaways:

  • Based on MediaRadar analysis, there were 151,825 advertisers in print in Jan-Apr 2018 representing a decrease of 13% year-on-year (net decline). In reality, 87,943 brands stopped buying print altogether.
  • This past year there were two categories of advertisers that were disproportionately impacted. Retail and real estate advertising were both down sharply. The two categories represent a big piece of print advertising.
  • Of the 7,467 brands replacing print with digital ads in 2018, 3,228 of them were new to digital (they didn’t run digital campaigns Jan-Apr 2017). This means that just 3.6% actively moved their business from print to digital this year.
  • While this analysis disproves that advertisers are moving in droves to digital, it does raise a question about the quality of the overall market for advertising. Bottom line is that a disproportionate number of companies sat out the market at the start of this year.

Further reading:

Mr. Magazine Blog: Todd Krizelman, CEO Of MediaRadar, Responds To A Mr. Magazine™ Question.