by Gautam Banerjee

Created on: October 09, 2009

The life blood of news industry, advertising is at its all time low, which shows few signs of abating. The financial health of the print media looks anemic and even the Web-only news operations, which do not have the cost overruns of print are now struggling to support journalism. In their angst about falling revenues news organizations are in danger of destroying what made them valuable in the past, which was their skill in gathering information that informs, surprises, amuses, exposes and educates. The industry complains that the recession is killing it.

In fact, it is not so. Let us suppose that a national newspaper has an average paid daily circulation of 642,000 during the last six months and an average readership ( people who read at least one issue a week) of 2.7 million. During the same period its website had 9.4 million visitors. In other words more readers than in the ink-on-paper era. This proves that the transient nature of the message on electronic media that drives audience to look for corroboration and authenticity in print or visual text.

It is said that online readers are less desirable to advertisers than their print fore bearers, in part because too little is known of them, making internet news sites less valuable. It is also percived that they spend less time on news sites than with newspapers. These are debatable points and do not reflect the quality of the news content which can be made compelling for the readers. If the column content is compelling then both web and physical text users of news will spend more time on it. Here lies the opportunity to use news columns to garner advertising revenue. If there is a high degree of integration between physical and virtual text in news platforms the advertiser can reap dual benefit of using both in combination. This would increase reach of the advertisement message and any cost overrun for the same would be marginal.

It is true that across media, the time spent by a reader has declined yet it can deliver an unmatched reach. The advertisement rides piggy back on the news content which a reader finds interesting and in the process, the advertisement message gets an opportunity to be seen by the reader. Subconsciously a message in print in any form is taken as authentic.

If the advertisement message is effective it would hold the attention of the reader for some time serving its purpose in generating a likely response. It is of course important whether the product or services advertised will help in satisfying his need. Nevertheless the first step is taken by the reader by going through the advertisement message, if it can catch his attention for a reasonable time.

If news industry is to survive it must generate revenue for itself by looking at various marketing opportunities. However, the acid test for the effectiveness of the news column in generating advertising revenue will rest on it's ability to generate cost-effective response for the advertisers.

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