The web has spawned all sorts of popular online activities—social networking, video sharing, blogging—but one of the more mundane has quietly grown into a leviathan. The use of Internet classified ads has more than doubled since 2005, according (PDF) to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And if you're looking for reasons why newspapers are struggling now, add online classifieds to the list.
According to Pew's research back in 2005, only 22 percent of online adults used classified ads like those on Craigslist. That number grew to 49 percent in April 2009, with nine percent visiting classified sites every day.
At the same time, Pew notes that classified ad revenue for traditional newspapers has plummeted. Back in 2000, newspapers made almost $20 billion from classified ads. In 2005, they still earned a healthy $17 billion. But in 2008, newspapers earned about $10 billion from classifieds.
The reason for this is undoubtedly due to the demographics of online classified ad users. Young adults aged 24-44 who are moving to new cities, looking for jobs, finding roommates, or buying/trading goods are "significantly more likely" than any other group to use online classified ads—even more likely than 18-24 year-olds. Predictably, college students and those who live in urban (or suburban) environments are also more likely to use classifieds than their rural counterparts.
Past Pew research has also shown that these age groups are shifting their overall focus to online news instead of traditional news outlets. In December 2008, Pew reported that young Internet users had begun looking to the Internet as their primary news source in large numbers—59 percent, compared to 34 percent in September 2007.
It's no surprise, then, that ads posted by younger users would move from one medium to another, though such a shift has drawn new attention to some of the less savory aspects of the classified section.
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