FinnTech and Our Business

The Classifieds Business is Changing

2005 marked the 10th anniversary of eBay; founded as AuctionWeb by software engineer Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar’s aim was to create a simple online trading system in which people could trade goods at a genuine market price. Over a long holiday weekend he wrote the computer code. It is fair to say that this was time well spent. From this modest beginning, eBay has become a global giant, and is by many measures the fastest growing business in the world.

eBay, although perhaps the most popular example of classifieds’ online migration, is of course not the only “intruder” into the world once dominated by newspapers’ classifieds pages. A myriad of international as well as national players eat away at newspapers’ print classifieds revenues. Most publishers no longer need to be made aware of this development. But there are still a lot of publishers that need to come to terms with the response.

This development must be embraced

Norwegians are, closely ahead the Japanese, the most newspaper-reading people in the world. By several measures, Norway is also among the most ICT-advanced countries in the world in terms of access as well as usage patterns and behavior. We observe that developments we have seen here for some years, now spread across more and more countries. And we also believe many of the responses that have been successful here, should have value for publishers elsewhere.

It is very important to recognize the emergence of online classifieds advertising as more than a threat to existing revenue. There exists a tremendous opportunity for publishers as a new industry, which will be much more valuable than paper classifieds have ever been, is shaping. Offline positions can be leveraged online. But it requires commitment and courage from publishers.