Small ads are flooding away from newspapers and onto the internet

Rupert Murdock once described them as ….. "rivers of gold" - ….. lucrative classified-advertising revenues that flowed into …..big newspaper groups. But ….. golden rivers are being diverted online as ….. internet breaks ….. grip that …..local and regional newspapers once held over their advertising markets.

Typically, ….. local newspaper would expect to get some 80% of its revenue from …..advertising, of which around two-thirds would come from classified. But last year in ….. San Francisco Bay area, …..job ads worth some $60 m were lost from newspapers to ….. web, reckons Classified Intelligence, ….. consultancy. Emap, …..British publisher, recently gave warning of a 30% decline in …..recruitment ads in one of its titles, Nursing Times, following ….. launch of ….. free website for jobs in Britain's National Health Service.

….. Internet has become ….. fastest-growing advertising medium. Online ad revenues reached $5.8 billion in …. first six months of this year in America, up 26% on ….. same period last year, according to ….. joint study by ….. Interactive Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse-Coopers. In Britain, online ad revenues surged by 62% in ….. same period to almost $870m.

Search advertising - ….. small text-ads that appear alongside Google and Yahoo searches - account for 40% of the online ad market. Another 20% goes to display ads and 18% to classified advertising. But …..search advertising can also work like …..small ad and will increasingly challenge print classifieds as web-sites develop localized and more elaborate services for online users.

Perhaps ….. most significant development came on November 16^th, when Google started up ….. prototype service called Google Base. It offers ….. searchable database of …..free listings, including small ads which can be narrowed down to postal regions. Among its first offerings were …..used cars. In time, Google could challenge eBay, whose own auction listings now work much like ….. giant classified website - especially with its "Buy-it-now" options. But eBay charges …..sellers. Even so, it sold more than 450m items in ….. tree months to September 30^th, for almost $11 billion.

In …..response, most print publishers are expanding online. Mr Murdock is buying …..websites including Propertyfinder and MySpace, ….. social-networking site. Newspaper groups have teamed up to jointly operate websites to compete with Monster for recruitment ads. But ….. online operators are expanding too. eBay, for instance, is building ….. global network of …..classified sites under the Kijiji brand. It also has …..stake in ….. popular Craigslist which, having soaked up do many listings around its San Francisco home, is now frightening other newspapers as it now expands its mostly-free ads service to other cities around ….. world.

The Economist (Nov 17th 2005)

Stop the world, we want to get off

Americans are growing warier and gloomier

Has ….. trauma of Iraq made …..Americans more isolationists? ….. new poll, released on November 17^lh, finds some evidence that it has. ….. Pew Research Centre periodically asks ….. sample of …...opinion leaders, and another sample of ….. general public, …..barrage of questions about "America's place in the world". Their answers are getting gloomier.

This is especially true of ….. elite. Asked whether America will succeed in establishing ….. stable democracy in Iraq, only 33% of journalists, 27% of academics and 13% of scientists and engineers thought it would. ….. general public were more optimistic - 56% thought their country would eventually prevail. Among ….. elite, only military officers were cheerier, with 64% predicting victory.

As for George Bush's calls for democracy in ….. wider Middle East, most Americans thought this was ….. good idea, but …..few thought it would succeed. ….. general public were divided: 22% thought it ….. bad idea, 36% ….. good idea that would probably succeed. ….. large majority of ….. elite thought it ….. good idea that would probably fail, with ….. exception of …..military and religious leaders, who were more optimistic.

Two-thirds of Americans thought their country was less respected than in ….. past. ….. most popular explanation was ….. war in Iraq. ….. whopping 88% of ….. elite cited Iraq as one of ….. main factors driving anti-Americanism, as did 71% of ….. general public.

Presumably because of this, …..elite and regular Americans alike arc feeling less gung-ho. All elite groups (apart from ….. armed forces, for which no data were available) were less likely than they were in 1993 to say that America should be ….. most assertive of …..leading nations. Among …..state and local government leaders, ….. proportion fell from 78% to 54%. And among ….. general public, ….. proportion who thought that America should "mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along ….. best they can on their own" rose from 30% in 2002 to 42% this year. This is comparable with ….. peaks of isolationist sentiment alter ….. Vietnam war and after ….. cold war ended.

Mr Bush can perhaps dismiss ….. defeatist mood of ….. elite. As Pew's researchers admit, ….. opinion leaders they interviewed were mostly Democrats. But ….. president cannot dismiss ….. public's growing desire not to have to deal with ….. sort of people who strap bombs to themselves and blow up wedding parties. Speaking at ….. air force base in Alaska this week, Mr Bush reiterated his view that America has no choice but to confront them. Islamic terrorists, he warned, seek "to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation". "That's not going to happen so long as I'm ….. President of ….. United States," he promised. But …..dwindling number of Americans are behind him.

The Economist (Nov 17th 2005 | WASHINGTON, DC)

American express?