A new study released by Pew suggests that many traditional news outlets, including TV news outlets such as CNN and ABC News, are having a hard time getting their legacy advertisers to follow them online.
CNN.com is one of the most prominent news websites online, but the advertisers are starkly different than those that pay big money to appear on CNN’s cable channel. Digital revenue is still tiny compared to traditional TV revenue.
The kinds of products and services being advertised online were quite different than in legacy platforms, and often were seen across multiple websites. On CNN cable television, for instance, the top three advertising categories were motion pictures and television, insurance, and telecommunications companies; on CNN.com they were financial ads, toiletries and cosmetics, and job search.
Professor Turow notes that the absence of legacy advertisers from the Web domains may reflect a problem. “Figuring out what they are doing instead, and why, might be a first step in trying to get some of them back.”