Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson spoke about a print advertising resurgence in a speech at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. He thinks advertisers are moving back to print because of his belief that print has a more attentive readership than Internet news readers.
Thomson believes that advertisers are starting to understand that consumers often ignore ads in other media because they are doing other things at the same time that sap their attention.
With papers, the ads may be more valuable because they stick around with the printed page. Online, people get distracted, flipping from page to page, and if they notice ads at all, it is because they are annoyed by their intrusion.
“The only multi-tasking that you can do while reading a newspaper is drink a cup of coffee,” he said. Online, he said, the link between the reader and the ad is more transient.
I think it is ironic that he used the phrase “flipping from page to page” when he was referring to online browsing, because that is exactly what happens when you read the paper version of a newspaper. But let’s get to my real disagreement with Mr. Thomson, all advertising is somewhat of an intrusion because most people would rather read the news than be alerted to a new product to buy.
So the real question here is which is more valuable to the advertiser, print or online? Mr. Thomson believes that a print newspaper reader is more on task and is therefore more likely to notice an ad. Really? That assumes the reader actually “flipped” to the page your ad was on. Whether he flipped or not, the advertiser paid for the impression. Online, advertisers only pay when a user opens the page that your ad is on.
The Internet also allows the advertiser to know when someone clicks an ad and can follow that clicker all the way to the sale so companies can keep advertising where their advertising is making a positive impact on sales. This is the real reason print is losing advertising budgets to online and I personally don’t see this trend changing.
I have to give Mr. Thompson credit for coming up with an angle on why the newspaper industry will resurge with advertisers. But …. is a coffee drinking newspaper reader really more attentive to ads?
