In November 2008 I wrote an article for our website on the Death of Print advertising, cue phone calls from newspaper sales managers saying I had got it wrong! At the time I picked April 2008 as the “tipping point” where the media crossed and the gap started. The data from Seek via the ANZ job Series would suggest that it happened in Australia in 2004!

For many years farrowjamieson has been tracking the slow decline in response rates of print advertising in recruitment compared to online job sites.  While the initial range of generalist job boards created a cheap alternative to listing of vacancies the reality was that people were still looking at the newspapers for casual readership and job enquiries.  Over a period of time as job sites increased and print decreased we have been awaiting the crossover.  History may well show us that April 08 was the time that the electronic media finally overtook the print media in dominating recruitment advertising.  In that month there was a very sharp decline in the number of jobs advertised in print, a reaction to the economic downturn no doubt, but it is interesting that this has never recovered.

The enclosed Australian data was sourced from Seek but uses the ANZ Job Advertisements data. We would appear to have lagged Australia by 3 or more years!

A note of caution. The print and online data both measure insertions, in the print world that would mean a single job may be measured 2 times depending on the number of insertions in a newspaper. In the online world that job could be “refreshed” 2 - 4 times therefore the recorded number of insertions could be higher than the “real” number of jobs. Also in the online world a job can be listed in 2 or more classifications.
However the trend line still tells the story.

     

Because we measure all of the advertising that we do, Farrowjamieson is able to source data from all of these sites, both print and electronic, to find out where the responses have been greatest.  While the print media will be fighting aggressively for their share of this large market the reality will be that many roles will now not appear in print at all.