News by the ton: 75 years of US advertising — Benedict Evans

rapidly declining circulation, fewer pages per newspaper and less overall revenue has meant fewer journalists. Indeed, there are now far fewer people working for American newspaper publishers than at any point since WW2

There are lots of things going on here, but I would start with the top line: advertising share of GDP started sliding immediately after the Dotcom bubble, had a major step down in the financial crisis and has been suspiciously flat ever since. That decline was very obviously concentrated in print but actually affected TV and radio as well. We think... See more

In 2018, the US newspaper industry shipped ~2.5m tons of newspaper, down from 12.5m tons at its peak.

Facebook in particular has been massively deflationary to online advertising: it offers vast quantities of relevant advertising inventory at much lower prices and much lower entry costs than you’d have needed in print, let alone TV.