The document discusses the challenges facing newspapers in transitioning to digital. It notes that while print still accounts for most revenue, print advertising and circulation are declining. The number of people accessing newspaper content online and on mobile devices is rising significantly. However, digital advertising CPMs are much lower than print, and most newspapers have relatively few digital-only subscribers compared to print. As a result, relying solely on digital advertising revenue remains a challenge due to lower prices and the lack of scalability for local news audiences online.

1. 1
 Print revenue from advertising and subscriptions still account for more
than 65% of most all metro papers total revenue.
 Newspapers have successfully raised home delivery prices and shifted
some of the revenue burden away from their dependency on print
advertising.
 Newspaper print advertising CPM’s are 5–7x higher than digital
advertising CPM’s.
The Case for Print

2. 2
 Print ad revenues have declined year‐over‐year for more than 30
consecutive quarters.
 Total newspaper print circulation peaked in 1990 and has been
declining ever since.
 The print subscriber demographic profile skews very old.
Problems with Print

3. 3
 100 million people are accessing newspaper media on laptops and desktops.
 127 million people are accessing newspaper media on smartphones and
tablets.
 The New York Times has almost 800,000 digital‐only subscribers.
 Facebook generated almost $1.3 billion in mobile advertising revenues in
2013.
 In November of 2013, Millennials clocked in at an average
of 96 hours online – both desktop and mobile.
 On December 25, 2013, there were 17.4 million digital
device activations, far surpassing the 6.8 million
activations on December 25, 2012.
 Marc Andreessen says the News Business will grow by
1,000 percent.
The Case for Digital

4. 4
 Most metro papers have a digital‐only subscriber
base that is less than 15% of their Sunday print
subscriber base.
 The supply of digital advertising impressions
continues to expand aggressively putting downward
pressure on digital advertising CPM’s.
 The rise of programmatic buying/selling of digital
advertising puts more downward pressure on digital
advertising CPM’s.
Problems with Digital

5. 5
 Local news audiences don’t scale digitally.
And that’s a problem because:
- Take 40 million page views per month
(TDMN monthly average)
- Put two ad positions on every page
- Achieve an annual 80% sell through rate at an
average $8 CPM for all ad positions
In one year you will generate a total of $7.6 million.
(That’s less than 2% of TDMN’s total revenues.)
Problems with Digital