By paulgillin | September 30, 2007 - 5:58 am - Posted in Fake News

Media-watchers have found some reasons to be optimistic recently:

  • Deutsche Bank thinks the alliance between 17 newspapers companies and Yahoo could stanch the industry’s bleeding much faster than expected, reports Editor & Publisher. Analysts think that the revenue from Yahoo’s HotJobs recruitment site, in particular, could add 20% to newspapers’ online revenue growth by the second half of 2008. Taken together, the online boost from the Yahoo alliance could pull newspapers out of their slide and turn them toward revenue growth by 2009, the authors say.

The forecast is positively giddy, given that few facts and figures have been released since the alliance was announced last November. It also seems optimistic in light of signs of a coming economic slowdown and softness in recruitment advertising. One odd note is the study’s description of the display advertising business as growing “gang-busters.” In fact, the most recent Interactive Advertising Bureau data actually sees a decline in display ads as a percentage of overall online advertising. While the overall display market is growing, it’s a stretch to characterize it as being on a tear.

  • Ad spending on newspaper websites increased 19.3% in the second quarter, according to a Newspaper Association of America survey cited in MediaPost. Of course, the decline in print advertising revenue for the quarter exceeded the total online revenue of the newspapers cited in the study. But it’s nice to see the growth trend continue.
  • E&P asks, plaintively, “Is Ad Revenue Stabilizing?” That’s because Wachovia Equity Research reported that newspapers suffered only a 7.2% decline in ad sales in July, which is less than the 7.5% and 8.1% drop-offs reported in May and June. While the news is heartening, it’s probably best to wait for a few more months’ worth of data before forecasting a soft landing.

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