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Newspapers’ digital media platforms are growing rapidly, study says

By Joyce Chang

A report released this week at a meeting of the World Association of Newspapers said that the digital platforms of newspaper companies are growing at “double-digit rates worldwide, in both usage and revenue production.”

The World Digital Media Trends report, compiled from studies by 71 research partners and covering 232 countries, said worldwide digital and mobile advertising revenues are projected to increase 12-fold from 2002 to 2011, to $150 billion.

An Associated Press article said one study in the report concluded that in some countries, “the Internet will become the primary news and information source within five years, while newspapers will lose the dominating position they have held for more than a century.”

While the report concluded that newspapers can’t depend solely on their print editions to keep them alive, experts cautioned that media companies should not rush unprepared into new mobile and Internet markets at the expense of their traditional print publications, the Associated Press wrote.

In the AP article, World Association of Newspapers President Gavin O’Reilly said about 60 percent of the new revenues goes to two companies, Google and Yahoo.

“The Net is a wonderful place if you know what you are looking for,” he said at a panel debate about digital media’s impact on newspaper revenues. “But we run the risk that running headlong into digital will turn our dollars into pennies.”

 

Newspaper companies must also continue to invest in the medium they know best — printed editions — since there are few accurate overviews of the impact of Internet revenues on newspapers, he said.

Other worldwide results from the report include:
–Wireless subscriptions are expected to grow more than three-fold, from $1.1 billion in 2002 to a projected $3.4 billion in 2011
–The number of homes with broadband is expected to grow more than ten-fold, from more than 51 million households in 2002 to nearly 540 million households in 2011
–The mobile telephone customer base has grown from 945 million in 2001 to 2.6 billion in 2006

Some interesting worldwide statistics from the report and meeting include:
–Online consumption of newspapers has risen by 20 percent in the last year and by 100 percent over the last three years.
–Slightly more than half of readers who view newspaper Web sites spend the same amount of time reading newspapers, while 35 percent say the time they spend with either print or online newspapers has increased.
–Print circulation in China, India and Latin America grew.

Additional information about the research data and the World Digital Media Trends full report is available for purchase or for download by WAN members. Another report, “Trends in Newsrooms 2008,” was also released at the meeting.

Thursday, June 5th, 2008 Filed under Multimedia journalism |