Auto dealers are losing the newspaper habit -- just like many newspaper readers.
Print newspapers attracted just 16.9 percent of dealership advertising last year, compared with a dominant 46.7 percent in 2002.
And the big winner from 2002-12 was no surprise: The Internet's share of dealership advertising rose from 5.0 percent to 26.5 percent in the decade -- although some of the shift went to newspapers' Web sites.
The data are from the National Automobile Dealers Association's annual statistical summary, which was released last week. (See story, Page 1.)
The survey also found that dealers' ad spending rose dramatically last year, up 12.5 percent from 2011 to $7.2 billion.
