Full Story from Marketing Charts here

"For the second quarter of 2009, total newspaper ad sales fell 29% to $6.8 billion, down from $9.6 billion last year, according to Q2 figures released by the Newspaper Association of America. 

As  evidence of the continued toll the recession is taking on the industry, online ad sales were significantly affected again this quarter, slipping 16% to $653 million. Online newspaper advertising declined 1.8% in all of 2008, but tumbled more than 13% in Q109.

Print Takes Hardest Hit

Total print advertising totaled $6.2 billion, a decline of 30% over the same period last year. Within the print category, national ads fell nearly 30%, while retail ads fell nearly 25%.

Classifieds ads took the biggest hit within the print category, falling a total of 40%. Job recruitment classifed ads declined 66%, the worst slide of any classified category. Automotive classifieds fell 43%, while real estate classifieds fell 46% for the quarter, the NAA said.

Newspaper ad losses have grown worse in each of the last 12 quarters, experiencing the worst declines in newspaper history, reports Media Buyer Planner.

For the first half, ad revenue fell 29%, to $13.4 billion. Ad revenue fell 28% in the first quarter.

The numbers, give perspective to what John Sturm, chief executive of the association, calls “a terrible stretch of bad road,” writes Mediaweek."

MarketingCharts.com reports magazine ad pages continue to decline in Q2 2009. 

The trend of declining ad pages has been significant over the past year: in Q208, ad pages were down 8.2%, followed by a drop of 13% in Q3, 17% in Q4 and 26% in Q109.

The magazines that saw the steepest decline in ad pages:

• Country Home, which saw ad pages fall 80.7%
• Conde Nast Portfolio (now shuttered), which lost 69.1% of ad pages.
• Blender (also shuttered), which saw ad pages fall 82.2%.

In terms of the biggest ad-page gainers, People Style Watch saw ad pages leap 33.1%, while Country Weekly’s pages grew 33% and Muscle & Fitness saw a 13.1% gain, MediaBuyerPlanner wrote.