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Following up on the recent comments Google CEO Eric Schmidt had concerning newspapers and their future, Advertising Age has posted video of him at their Ad Age Madison & Vine conference.  In his stage appearance, he forecasts the future as “bleak” for the newspaper industry, adding that the loss of investigative reporting in which newspapers excel is a “tragedy” as it “is so important for democracy.”

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Courtesy: eMarketer

For most of us, we’ve been singing the gospel of online for years to businesses, marketers, and perhaps to our own media company.  We have a ready arsenal of statistics on the number of Americans online and their tendency to research products online prior to purchase.  eMarket has publish an article titled “Retail shoppers hit the web first” based off a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey which helps give clarity to the entire purchasing cycle.

“Eight out of 10 respondents who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick-and-mortar store said they had visited the store’s Website first, according to a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey. More than one-half said they purchased from the retailer on whose Website they had spent the most time.”

Now we can trace the line straight from the Internet to the point of purchase.

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ValueClick has introduced its own behavioral targeting product intended to compete with AOL’s Tacoda and Yahoo’s BlueLithium.  The readers of dotShout! were obviously intrigued with the rumor courtesy of RumorMonger that they’re talking to startup Revenue Science about an acquisition.  Here are the other top articles on dotShout! for Wednesday, July 23, 2008.

1. ValueClick to buy Revenue Science? [Rumormonger]
2. IBM continues to feed Novell with Cognos…
3. 30 startup ideas Y Combinator wants to fund…
4. Web 2.0 Marketplace Listings for July 22nd, 2008
5. DashGo Connects Musicians and Labels to Social…
6. Open source mash-up: Zimbra + SugarCRM,…
7. Steve Case bets on the Facebook platform, just…
8. Sony Pushes Out Three New Walkmen Phones, the…
9. Tri-Solar LED Flashlight: because three panels…
10. Scoble’s face on a grilled-cheese sandwich…

Tune in tomorrow for the next dotShout! top ten.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt has lent a boot in the daily kicking of the down-but-not-out newspaper industry.  Schmidt sees the future as “bleak” for the newspaper industry, adding that the loss of investigative reporting in which newspapers excel is a “tragedy” as it “is so important for democracy.”

The tragedy is that his positive comments about the value of newspapers has been lost as bloggers and traditional media fall over themselves to report his dark forecast for the medium.  The tragedy is that after stating that there is a “huge moral imperative” to help newspapers, they’ve prioritized it lower than brokering a deal with Lion’s Gate to monetize movie clips.  The tragedy is that these appear to be hollow words from a company that professes to “do no evil.”

The truth is that there is no moral requirement for Google to help newspapers better monetize their online advertising, nor abandon their recent policy of linking to their own news articles from The Associated Press.  There is no moral imperative for any business to step up to aid the industry, though I fear the future of news may be rife with “talking heads” espousing opinions as fact.

This is another wake up call for newspapers, television and radio to embrace this distribution channel with the same commitment as their primary.  Although Google’s mantra is to “do no evil,” that doesn’t translate to charity.

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A recent study conducted by Yankelovich titled “When Advertising Works” has hit the web sparking a debate between the effectiveness of traditional media in stimulating word-of-mouth or conversations with that of digital media.

That aspect of the study has few debating the comparison on a general basis by which I mean television, radio, magazine, newspaper, and billboard, versus email messages, Internet banner ads, social networking,  but on an individual basis the conversation is “spirited.”

Our good friend Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian, sees this as an opportunity to single out social media (blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc) for their deficiency in statistically backing up claims of reaching a higher quality of audience.  I too firmly believe in following the metrics, but from what I can see there is no segmented data to back him up either.

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