• by December 7, 2000

Following yesterday's Minute about traditional advertisers (in this case the entire newspaper industry) gradually accepting the Internet as a viable ad medium, one of our readers asked a very natural question: What about the "flipside"? How do "dot-coms" feel about advertising in traditional media?

Well, that's a horse of a different color. Staying on the print side of things, here's the sad reality - the days of triple-digit advertising growth are over, as the publishers of the Internet bibles such as Business 2.0, Red Herring and several others have discovered recently.

The Dec. 26 issue of Business 2.0, which Imagine Media took biweekly in May, is the smallest since August 1999. Wired's January 2001 issue, for example, will carry 124 pages, down 7 pages (5.3%) from the 131 the Conde Nast magazine had in January 2000. Red Herring's Dec. 19 issues has only 58 pages, the lowest total this year.

Newspapers themselves are now bracing for yet another financial hit. On Wednesday, Knight Ridder announced layoffs and Dow Jones said ad sales fell 12% in November and warned that fourth quarter earnings will fall short of forecasts.

As MSNBC put it, all this is a "hangover" after this year's ad spending spree by dot-coms, politicians, and Olympic sponsors.

At the same time, any dot-com will tell you that advertising in traditional vehicles is a worthwhile endeavor if done properly, so perhaps this is not quite a hangover, but only a slight headache.