SAGE Advice: Selling Newspaper Ad Space in a Shifting Petroleum Paradigm
By Leo J. Shapiro, Erik Shapiro, and Steve Yahn
Original Publisher: Editor & Publisher Date: September 29 2006
highlight
- The shape of the future for personal transportation and the consequences of those changes on life in America become clearer as we learn how consumers manage to save on gasoline as its price ratchets up towards $3 a gallon.
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Falling gasoline prices do
not signal a return to joy-riding around in modified military mega-jalopies.
Our Leo J. Shapiro & Associates polls of
Last July, with gas prices hovering at three dollars per gallon, our national
poll found that 66 percent of drivers reported cutting back on driving to save gas. Even though prices in September have fallen off nearly
half a dollar, 60 percent of drivers are still reporting cutting back on
driving to save gas.
As Leo J. Shapiro & Associates Chairman George Rosenbaum notes "It
appears that the cutbacks in driving are holding even as the price of gas goes
down"
High gas prices caused a shift to smaller vehicles.
An article posted on September 11 on Forbes.com reveals that, comparing 2005
sales through August and 2006 sales through August of the ten top selling
vehicles, five are up (all sedans) and five are down
And even though gas prices have now fallen, car buyers still demand smaller
vehicles.
A recent article in the New York Times ["Decline in Gas Prices Isn't
Buoying Detroit,"
Biological and cultural evolution is often irreversible and occurs by quantum
leaps in the presence of crash-flush cycles. An enormous meteor cloaked the
earth in dust [crash!] and wiped out the dinosaurs. By the time the dust
settled and earthly bounty resumed [flush!], a little creature they want to
call a mouse had emerged as king of the jungle.
THE BOTTOM LINE
What does this mean for newspaper ad sellers?
Falling gas prices combine with reduced driving and driving smaller cars to result
in more money available to spend on other things. This opens up wide
opportunities for selling newspaper ads to the businesses that sell those
things.
Moreover, newspaper ads can help consumers do their comparison shopping from
home instead of driving from store to store. Strategic clustering of ads can
help consumers plan more efficient shopping trips.
Newspapers ad sales can benefit if the ad sellers learn to ride this new
"drive smaller and less" paradigm into the sunrise.
To be kept informed about further findings from ongoing research on this topic, contact 8SAGES.com.