'WSJ' Ad Slump Continued In May

By: E&P Staff Advertising linage continued its downward trend at The Wall Street Journal last month, as a 28.8% drop in technology advertising hammered volume during May, Dow Jones & Co. reported.

Dow Jones said May linage at its flagship daily declined 2.6% in May compared with the same period in 2004 and that year-to-date linage was down 6.2%.

The technology volume drop was "due to softness in communications, hardware and software advertising, partially offset by increased advertising for personal computers and consumer electronics," Dow said.

General advertising was up 4.2% despite declines in pharmaceutical, aviation and professional services advertising. Classified and "other" advertising linage increased 3.2% at the paper.

Financial advertising linage decreased 2.4% largely because of a decline in retail advertising partially offset by an increase in tombstone advertising.

At the weekly business paper Barron's, total national advertising pages decreased 6.9% in May due to a decline in general advertising.

Internationally, Dow Jones said, The Wall Street Journal Europe's linage increased 12.1% in May because of increase in financial, technology, general, and classified advertising. The Asian Wall Street Journal's linage increased 4.6% due to increases in technology, financial and classified advertising, it said.

At the Ottaway Newspapers chain of community papers, advertising linage decreased 1.5% in May. Dow Jones said the decrease was to declines in classified auto and non-daily advertising, partially offset by gains in retail, national and classified real estate advertising.