GroupM, responsible for 30 percent of global media buying, put Net advertising at 13.3 percent of total UK advertising this year, compared with national newspapers at 13.2 percent. And the 13.3 percent is a conservative estimate, the Guardian reported.

The implications are big for the UK’s national newspapers, which receive 25 percent of their revenue from classified ads. As GroupM’s report explains, “Jobseekers know they don’t need to buy nationals any more.”

The report comes at the same time as comments from Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster dismissing anxieties that his free classified advertising site will be the downfall of the US newspaper industry.

The real problem for newspapers? The stock market, Buckmaster says.

“It is true that for a variety of reasons it’s become harder in recent years for newspapers to increase their profitability — their already considerable profitability — and so Wall Street has pressured them to cut costs by laying off people, or if they don’t have the stomach for it, they sell to a big chain that will lay off a bunch of people to try to increase profitability,” Buckmaster told the UK’s Press Gazette. “In our minds, that’s really what's going on, but it doesn’t sound too good to explain it that way, so it’s easier to point a finger to some external boogie man and I think we’ve been scapegoated that way a little bit. But we’re not really prepared to take the blame.”

Source: The Guardian, the Press Gazette (through Ifra Executive News Service)