In Outsell’s Opinion: Thinking Out Loud About the Next Wave of Challenges for Newspapers
Last week a report in the newsletter Classified Intelligence confirmed rumors that Google would like to aggregate classified listings and move them into its main search results. It is in talks with possible partners such as CareerBuilder to aggregate listings from the paid listings sites. This would be a cut toward the jugular vein of newspaper publishers, who have struggled to hold on to their cash-cow classified ads, which traditionally have contributed about half of newspaper revenues. Classifieds were the first advertising seriously threatened by Web competitors, given the new value that transactional databases brought to buying and selling real estate, offering and taking jobs, and buying cars. Newspapers’ competitors have been numerous, and in response the papers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into sites like CareerBuilder, Adico (CareerCast), NYT