Pew’s report underscores the fact that many of us have written about: Digital advertising, once the little sister, is surpassing print (newspaper and magazines) in the U.S. and Europe, and will pass whatever we mean when we say “TV” by 2016 or so. So news companies’ failure to get a larger piece of the fastest-growing ad segment — perhaps the fastest-growing ever — is a big problem. And the problem is growing: Three years ago, the top five digital companies took 63 percent of U.S. digital ad revenue; this year, they’ll take 72 percent, eMarketer estimates. Those companies: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, and AOL. That 9 percent differential is worth about $3.5 billion a year. Yes, it’s getting worse, by so many standards, as we’ll continue to see over the next month as final 2011 financials come in and more jobs go away.
The migration from tv and print to digital is the media equivalent of the Ice Age.
#futureofnewsbiz