Newspapers face pressure in selling online advertising

The problem most newspapers are having with their online operations may not be a lack of readers, but rather the way they are selling the advertising they depend on. Media buyers say that if newspapers want to get their online revenue growing again, once the economy recovers, they have to tie ad rates more closely to results, charge less for ads and provide Web content that readers can't get at every news aggregation site. The problem doesn't appear to be getting people to read digital newspaper content. The average number of unique visitors to newspaper Web sites grew 10% in the first quarter, according to a Nielsen Online analysis. Newspaper-site visitors generated an average of more than 3.5 billion page views per month in the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 13% over the same three months a year ago. That page-view total is the highest since the NAA started keeping track of the data in 2004. Numerous studies point to the affluence of newspaper readers, something that should please advertisers. Yet, major publishers like Gannett Co., New York Times Co. and McClatchy Co. have seen online advertising revenues decline over the past year, exacerbating the problem of much steeper drop-offs in print ad sales.