Newspapers came under renewed pressure in 2016 as print advertising dropped by double digits, often in a quarter. Gannett saw a drop in national print advertising by 35.1 percent in the third quarter of 2016, but still managed overall to eke out only a 14.8 percent drop in overall print advertising. Ouch. I worked at Gannett, and I was lucky to have great commercial managers. Why did this happen? The trends in the US and the UK are the same, and Roy Greenslade of The Guardian has just published an excerpt from a former MD of the Mail newspapers about why this collapse is happening.

Turning to display, the category which traditionally held up well was retail, which is still the largest category. The reason was simple. It worked to the extent it was measureable.

But this model is under pressure because of the growth of databases which enable advertisers to target audiences and email their offers directly to them.

Zitter looks at the market from the national level in the UK and says that to win back advertisers, they need to maintain a direct relationship with them to the largest extent possible and not simply rely on programmatic exchanges. That makes sense, but with the sharp decline in revenue, newspaper groups are not just losing editorial headcount but sales staff as well. Rough seas ahead.