World Digital Publishing Conference: The Path to 50% Digital Profitability

Here are some of the highlights of Levitt's speech:

• Classified advertising online will be free: growing non-classified revenue will be key
• Selling ads around classified listings will be increasingly important
• The demand for targeted advertising will increase
• Demand for print products will continue to shrink and print advertising will continue to contract

Levitt went on to talk about how newspapers can win in the digital age:

• Have a point of view, a focus on where the paper is going
• Understand that online is not a product, just a different means of distribution
• Align print and online business models and strategy
• Aggregate local audience for incremental reach and frequency (develop different types of sites than online editorial content
• Design is important - 50% of readers come in from other sources to read only one page, bypassing the homepage. Thusly, every page must drive readers further into the site
  

As at all publishers, Cox also has some concerns:

• Is there time to transition the old business model to the new?
• Avoid using online profits to "over subsidize" traditional revenues
• Proliferation of classified competitors
• Additional aggressive local competition