Online Newspaper Revenue: Puny AND Persuasive (to broadcasters)?

I’ve had a series of interesting conversations lately, keyed around a new report on local Web site earnings. The study pulled back the veil on who’s making what on the Web. The basis of the report was data from more than 400 daily newspapers and TV stations, plus months of tedious research into how the local Internet dollars are flowing for competitors like AOL, AutoTrader.com, Monster, TV stations, Yellow Pages and others.

The result was a fascinating peek at how $1.65 billion in local Internet ad dollars are being divvied up. The big headline was that sites run by daily newspapers were snaring 40 percent of those dollars. We found:

· Small newspapers – or the 85 percent of the industry whose circulation is 50,000 or below – average $5.84 per unit of print circulation.

· Medium-size newspapers with circulation up to 200,000 average $13.69.

· Large newspapers above 200,000 circulation average $20.41.

Combined, the industry’s 1,475 daily newspapers generated $655 million in local Internet ad dollars in 2002. Local broadcast TV stations, of which there are about 1,300, generated barely one-tenth that amount.

2002 Newspaper Online Revenue By Print Circulation

© 2003 Borrell Associates Inc.

While we can draw some broad conclusions about Internet earnings for the newspaper and TV crowd, not everybody fits the mold.

A few months ago I called an executive at one large newspaper from whom we were trying to extract online revenues for our report. Armed with the knowledge of revenues from 140 newspaper sites at the time, I boldly guessed how much his online operation was making.

I was wrong by a factor of 2.2. His site was grossing millions more than I had guessed.

About two weeks later someone from a mid-size newspaper came up to me after a conference presentation. He handed me his card, and I asked the circulation of his newspaper. By then I was armed with the knowledge of revenues from about 200 newspapers, so I boldly guessed that his site made about $350,000.

I was wrong. It made $0.

Just the other day I got a letter from a publisher in Connecticut whose site, I had projected, could be making as much as $430,000 if his Web site adopted best practices. I truly thought the revelation would shock him and that he’d pick up the telephone and say please, oh please, tell me how!

His note was brief and to the point: “If our newspaper does as poorly as $430k,” the publisher wrote, “I’ll fire everyone involved!”

And so goes the business of trying to fit Web sites earnings into a mold.

The fact is, some sites run by daily newspapers are doing phenomenally well compared with their peers. It is typical to see some newspaper sites making three to four times the average for their peer circulation group. Yet there are others that are trying hard (even a few that have won awards for spectacular site features) but performing poorly on the revenue side.

This inward look at how well the newspaper industry is doing is a step toward an important benchmarking process. It shows newspapers how well they compare against their peers. But as my colleague Clark Gilbert from Harvard Business School says, the best newspapers are just the prettiest of the ugly stepsisters.

Looking outside the industry, we found that six public newspaper companies generate less than half as much revenue per unique user as six of their non-newspaper peers. This group includes AutoTrader.com, Monster.com, HotJobs, eBay, Yahoo!, and CNET Networks. While the newspapers generated an average of $7.93 per unique user in 2002, their competitors generated $17.12.

I have a theory for this. All the competitor sites mentioned are pure-play Internet companies that a) have complete dependence on Internet revenues and b) are not dependent on financing, resources or demands of a parent company focused on a competing medium.

One might argue that Monster and AutoTrader.com aren’t exactly pure-play Internet companies. Monster is owned by TMP Worldwide, which makes money off traditional print businesses like Yellow Pages and newspaper recruitment ad commissions. And AutoTrader.com’s parent is a print classified company as well, Trader Publications, publishers of Auto Trader magazines. But TMP derived nearly half its revenue from online operations last year, and you could say that AutoTrader.com derived 100% of its $80 million from online products because it is indeed a separate entity owned only partly by Trader Publications. (eBay also happens to be part-owner of AutoTrader.com, along with Cox Communications and Landmark Communications.) When it comes to per-unique-user revenue, even with that print affiliation, AutoTrader.com and Monster.com blew the rest out of the water. AutoTrader.com had $33.33, Monster.com $37.91.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of all that newspaper companies just can’t be focused on the Web rests in how puny their Internet revenues look on the corporate spreadsheet. We found that online revenues at a dozen public companies averaged barely 2% of total company revenues. For a company the size of Journal Register Inc., which owns 23 newspapers, its 2002 online revenues of $4 million represent the equivalent of one of their smallest newspapers.

Online Revenues as a Percent of Total Newspaper Revenues