Tracking Elk Grove’s foreclosure

Elk Grove News’ own applied version of freakonomics

As promised, we have devised a tracking mechanism to look at the relationship between the foreclosure notices and display advertising in Elk Grove dominant media source, The Elk Grove Citizen.

We will look at the number of pages of paid display ads, real estate ads and trustee sales ad (foreclosure notices) in each edition of The Citizen. Over the next few months we hope to identify trends as to the direction of our economy.

Specifically, once trustee sales decrease, will display and real estate ad increase significantly? Conversely, if trustee sales increase in terms of pages of advertising, will the display and real estate ads lag or even decrease?

We hope to find out and identify when it happens. At some point we hope to be able to tell when the market has turned the corner.

A few caveats. Our analysis will not include classified advertising.

Strong economy or not, newspaper classified advertising is quickly losing market share to websites like Craigslist, eBay, Monster.com and several others. Newspaper classifieds are essentially a dinosaur.

In the case of Craigslist, they offer free advertising for several categories that were once the domain of traditional newspaper. Newspapers simply cannot compete in this market.

Also we will not include special advertising sections. The advertisers in these sections often are irregular or institutional advertisers in nature.

In the chart below, you will find the number of pages for trustee sales, real estate ads and display ads starting with the July 9, edition of The Citizen.