Having bought my last car (and sold my previous one) without once
looking at a newspaper, I can understand how the auto category is
slipping badly for newspapers. As the Wall Street Journal reported last week in an article by Joseph Hallinan,
“Auto ads, a major source of newspaper-classified advertising, have
been slipping steadily for nearly two years. But the slippage may be
turning into a landslide.”
A couple key indicators, as reported by Hallinan: Tribune Co. just
announced that its newspaper auto-classifieds revenue dropped 16
percent in December; Lee Enterprises reported a 15.2-percent drop in
auto advertising for the fourth quarter of 2005; McClatchy Co. told of
a 20-percent decline for December.
This week, another bad-news indicator: The Polk Center for Automotive
Studies released a study showing that the Internet is now the dominant
medium among new car buyers. It described traditional mass media as
“nearly obsolete” among first-time car buyers. (Here’s a report from MediaDailyNews on the Polk study.)
Here’s a telling excerpt from the WSJ story:
“Dealers are finding Web ads generate strong responses. ‘Eight out of
10 customers that walk into our dealership have already looked at our
website,’ says Wes Lutz,
who owns Extreme Dodge/Hyundai in Jackson, Michigan. Demand from the
Internet is so keen that three years ago he designated a new position
at his dealership: Internet manager. That person’s job is to reply to
all Internet inquiries within an hour.“Mr. Lutz still advertises with the local paper, but not nearly as much
as he did 10 years ago. ‘They’re just really antiquated,’ he says.
‘They’re just stuck in time.'”
That’s a wake-up call. Jackson is not in a major metro
area; it’s in the middle of Michigan, west of Detroit. These trends are
far-reaching.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this item put Jackson east of Detroit. It is, of course, to the west.
