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WIKI ANALYSIS
See also Impact of Internet Advertising
Important Publishing Industry Metrics to Watch
- Circulation, which includes both newspapers sold on newsstands as well as subscriptions, remains an essential factor to newspapers’ profitability. Recently, circulations at most print publications have been falling; the internet is frequently cited as a culprit. However, circulation is not always a sign of the strength or adaptability of a news organization. Well-managed news organizations are expanding into multi-platform companies where print, online and broadcast are increasingly streamlined as strategy to survive.
- Newsprint Prices are an important variable cost for newspapers. Recently, cheap paper from China has been one piece of good news for the publishin industry, as it has kept newprint prices down.
- Advertising Revenue: In recent years the rise of the internet has been a double whammy for the publishing industry -- both stealing readers away to online sources of news but also canibalizing ad revenue as advertisers seek out targeted ads on the web. Additionally, expected online advertising revenue that was expected to offset the loss of print circulation failed to perform at expected levels. Newspapers are having difficulty competing with other online advertising networks. Evidence of such difficulty can be seen in statistics reported by the Newspaper Association of America. In 2007 the NAA reported that newspaper ad revenues were down 9.4% to $42 billion, the most significant percentage loss in the 50 years that the NAA has been reporting these figures.[1]
Only a little over 10 years ago, the newspaper business was one of the best in the entire investing world. Most cities in the U.S. are only large enough to support a single daily newspaper, and even the large cities had one that most considered *the* paper (such as the New York Times over the Post, and the Chicago Tribune over the Sun-Times). This created a bunch of mini-monopolies around the country, where local advertisers had to pay up to the city paper to get their products in front of the widest audience. Additionally, classified ads were a lucrative business. Before eBay (EBAY) and Monster Worldwide (MNST), local junk slingers and job recruiters relied on the main paper to hawk their wares or recruit new employees. Newspaper production costs are largely fixed expenses (printing 1000 copies costs little more than printing 1), so each additional paper sold over break even was almost pure profit. Great investors like Warren Buffett recognized this, making big investments in newspapers, and the newspaper companies that bought their way into new markets, like Tribune and Washington Post Company (WPO), saw profits continually rise.
Today, of course, times have changed dramatically. Newspaper publishers have seen the enemy, and it's name is the internet. The internet seems almost the perfect invention for decimating newspapers. For one, it's ubiquitous. No longer does the person selling a used camera have to sell just within his metropolitan area - now he can sell all over the world online. The internet has torn down sales barriers, allowing people from anywhere to easily buy products from any vendor, eliminating the localized markets that used to exist. With the news online, and for free, newspapers have seen their subscription rates plummet, wiping out circulation revenues. The worst for newspapers is the significant competitive advantages internet advertising has over print. When advertising online, vendors can directly target any set of characteristics to target ads to, and immediately get feedback on how successful those ads are from a return-on-investment standpoint, something that is nearly impossible to do accurately through print ads. While newspapers do, arguably, provide a better medium for consuming information, this is not nearly enough to save them from continuing decline as the internet becomes increasingly available through handheld electronic devices like Apple's (AAPL) iPhone or Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle.
Publishing Companies
Companies that are impacted by the strength of the publishing industry
- Timber and Paper companies such as Plum Creek Timber Company (PCL), International Paper Company (IP), and Weyerhaeuser Company (WY) are impacted by the success of the publishing industry, as demand for newsprint increases timber prices.
- Adobe Systems (ADBE), which makes page layout and design software for the publishing industry, stands to gain from a growing print publication market.
- News Corporation (NWS), a media conglomerate with book, magazine, and newspaper publishing segments, stands to lose from weakness in the print publication market.
References
- ↑ NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years, www.editorandpublisher.com, retrieved March 29, 2008.
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