Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine blogged about a recent Wall Street Journal article that stated:

But time may be running out. Now, for the first time, pure-play Web companies have the biggest share of the local online-ad market. In 2007, Internet companies had a 43.7% share of the $8.5 billion local online-ad market, while newspaper companies had a 33.4% share, according to the media research firm Borrell Associates. Just three years ago, newspapers had 44.1% of the local online-ad market. (Directories such as the Yellow Pages have 10.1%, and local television outlets 9.3%.)

So in three years, newspapers lost over 10% of the local online ad market. Or what I guess actually happened (but the article doesn’t explicitly state) is that the local online ad market grew substantially and the newspapers’ share of it did not grow much at all, perhaps even shrinking.

The interesting part of Jeff’s blog post is right at the end:

The internet is an entirely new economy. It’s not built on big. It’s built on a mass of smalls. And newspapers think big. That’s their real challenge.

The same applies for the digital signage market. RedPost is going after a mass of smalls, not one or two big retailers or casinos. As far as I can tell, everyone else in digital signage is chasing digital billboards (at $500k a piece), casinos, high end retailers, and Wal-Mart.

I tried to find a good image to go with “mass of smalls” but all I could come up with was Arnold. Chris Jordan has this cool art exhibit…but it didn’t really fit so I stuck with Arnold.