Will Internet Coupons Be The End of Print Newspapers?

Last week there was an interesting article on how online coupons may be putting a dent in the print newspaper industry.

According to the article, the newspaper industry is only as good as it's coupon and advertising revenue. With many newspapers adding online editions with printable coupon sections, the cost to print newspapers could be catastrophic without improved integration between the two divisions.

Currently 15 percent of today's consumers use Internet coupons. This is a much smaller number than the 40 percent who still use the newspaper for coupon clipping, but the columnists, Leo J. Shapiro, Steve Yahn, and Erik Shapiro, fear that as the Internet becomes a more established source for coupons, more consumers will move away from the print newspapers.

Taking it a step further, the article looks at the effectiveness of online promotions of new products with the ability to include interactive options to consumers. Utilizing the information obtained by this interaction could allow promotions to be targeted directly at a specific consumer group. This could prove to be a much more powerful marketing approach compared to placing an ad in a print newspaper and having it just sit there.

According to the authors, online coupons will eventually push ahead of print newspaper coupons and unless the newspaper industry is prepared to, "develop better information-handling technologies to integrate the print and online editions of the newspaper," the future may be dismal for printed newspapers.

I found the article to be very intuitive and interesting. Not only does the Internet have an influence over the revenue received from the distribution of coupons, but it has also absorbed dollars from print newspaper job and real estate listings revenue.

Visit SAGE Advice: Newspapers Caught in Web as Clippers Click E-Coupons to read the entire article and how Boodle, a popular online resource for Internet newspaper coupons, responded.