Understanding the Correlation between Consumer Newspaper Usage and Retail Display Advertising Volume

There is no shortage of studies, articles and reports on how consumers are turning away from daily newspapers to other media forms and how this is impacting the economics of the newspaper industry. The explanation or speculation for the consumer decline in newspaper usage centers on technological change and the shift away from the printed page to various alternative digital or electronic forms and versions. When viewed that way, people of all categories are simply not reading the newspaper as they once did. Instead, they are spending their available time with online media, particularly with interactive smartphones. What is missing in these discussions is the impact and effect on how interconnected newspaper readership and retail advertising are. There is a strong correlation between the declines in the two factors. Much of the speculation about the demise of the physical retail store and the retail newspaper display advertising volume on which it depended to generate traffic and sales is similar to that of the decline in newspaper usage and readership and the two must be investigated together.