Borrell Associates' Fifth Annual Benchmarking Report on local media websites analyzed web revenues for 2,855 local media properties, including 740 Daily Newspapers; 252 Weekly Newspapers; 1,260 Radio Stations; 570 TV Stations and 33 Independent Local Sites.
The action on the local media battlefield is focusing on the Web. Newspapers are scrambling to make up losses in classified advertising. TV stations are scrambling to cover declines in automotive and political ads. Radio operators are worried about a future in which audio programming comes from computer speakers and iPods instead of radios. And yellow page directories are finally getting serious about trying to stop the migration of business look-ups to the Web as Google and Yahoo add local addresses and phone numbers to search results.
Borrell gauges this year's U.S. local online advertising at 7.5 billion, growing at a clip of 31.6% over 2006. Newspapers continue to hold the dominant share. They control 35.9% of all locally spent online advertising, but pure-play internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Monster et al.) are hot on their heels, with 33.2%. Yellow pages operators control 11.7%; Other Print (e.g., Homes & Land and other local magazines) 9.2%; TV stations 7.7% and radio stations 2.2%.
Key stats from the report
LOCAL ONLINE ADVERTISING
2002 Ad Spending: 1.65 billion
2003 Ad Spending: 2.1 billion
2004 Ad Spending: 2.7 billion
2005 Ad Spending: 4.8 billion
2006 Ad Spending: 5.7 billion
2007 Projected Ad Spending: 7.5 billion
NEWSPAPERS
2002 Online Revenue: 655 million
2003 Online Revenue: 811 million
2004 Online Revenue: 1.19 billion
2005 Online Revenue: 2.0 billion
2006 Online Revenue: 2.6 billion
2007 Projected Online Revenue: 3.2 billion
2006 Average Market Share per Newspaper Site: 15.1%
TV STATIONS
2002 Online Revenue: 55 million
2003 Online Revenue: 75 million
2004 Online Revenue: 119 million
2005 Online Revenue: 283 million
2006 Online Revenue: 430 million
2007 Projected Online Revenue: 602 million
2007 Average Market Share per TV Site: 1.0%
RADIO STATIONS
2002 Online Revenue: NA
2003 Online Revenue: 18 million
2004 Online Revenue: 34 million
2005 Online Revenue: 60 million
2006 Online Revenue: 125 million
2007 Projected Online Revenue: 189 million
2007 Average Market Share per Radio Cluster: 0.5%
2007 Avg. Rev. per Station: 8,625 (sm. mkt.), 140,472 (lg. mkt.)
