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In a post yesterday, Nieman Journalism Labâs Martin Langeveld crunched the numbers underscoring the general assumption that âthe audience for news has shifted from print to the Web in a big way.â In fact, Langeveld found,
All generally accepted truths notwithstanding, more than 96 percent of newspaper reading is still done in the print editions, and the online share of the newspaper audience attention is only a bit more than 3 percent.
If true, Langeveldâs argument upends notions weâve taken for granted about the relationship between online and in-print newspaper readershipâand thus about the impact of online advertising. While recent history suggests that online ads cannot, on their own, sustain most journalistic institutions, they can still provide one revenue stream among others (subscriptions, etc.).
So we want to know from you: as a news consumer, when it comes to online ads, what will you tolerate? What types of commercial vehiclesâpop-up ads, traveling ads that move across your screenâdo you find intolerable? What do you think of targeted ads that âknowâ your consumer habits? And, assuming that ads will remain, in some form, part of the picture of online newsâwhat kinds of ads would you, as a news consumer, most like to see?
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