Emilia Akulenko’s Weblog

Two important news items came out last week with Google’s announcement that it will provide free access to news feeds distributed by the news agencies feeding the print media.

The announcement is doubly important with the study by the Washington Post demonstrating that the classified ads market took nearly $3 billion in revenue from the press in 2006. In terms of advertising, it is even more flagrant; advertising budgets invested in the Internet will overtake those invested in the press and rise to €45 billion ($62 billion) in 2011.

“We are on the brink of a major change across the media horizon, influenced by technological changes, user habits and business advertising strategies” commented James Rutherfurd.

This information will only reinforce the questions that perpetuate in large press group board rooms. How to stop the flight of advertising investments and how to save one of the finest professions in the world “journalism”?

It is surely too late. When Facebook, Google and Youtube were born, press owners shunned the Internet, concentrating on the internationalization of their publications for free, thinking that it would be the winning strategy.

Unless the press regroups to offer qualitative advertising space on a European or worldwide scale with a single, self service advertising platform. At least engaging in a strategy of forced acquisitions of Web 2.0 companies with strong traffic like Dailymotion, Netvibes, Facebook, Twitter, etc…The press does not have very many exit options, which Rupert Murdoch and others have understood for a long time.