With circulation numbers sinking and print ad rates dipping just as fast, now seems like a really bad time to start a magazine. But digital publishers like Politico, Pitchfork and Pando are doing just that: backwards-engineering their online publications for the physical page.

The trend is a 180-degree flip from the typical publisher transition from print to digital: Whereas print publishers have sold their websites as extensions of their print products, today's digital publishers are creating magazines to supplement their websites.

Let's take a look at some key statistics compiled by CMO.com and Digiday:

   77% of web display ads are never seen

   54% of web ads are technically impossible to see

   23% of the ads are viewable but not seen

   Average time spent viewing an ad is just 1.7 seconds

   The average person is served more than 1700 banner ads per month

   Only about 12% of consumers trust search engine ads

   Click through rates are as low as 0.1% in some cases

But some organizations have seen results from online ads. For instance, 60% of LinkedIn users have clicked on an ad on the site. 

Two trends are poised to have a significant impact on the way brands reach new customers: People are watching more video every month and they are canceling their cable subscriptions. Compelled by on-demand streaming services that provide anytime access to programs, Americans are cutting the TV cord and watching more video on mobile devices. A new study offers compelling evidence for how video marketing campaigns can give brands a way to reach audiences and build trust in a landscape without traditional ads. According to the latest Nielsen data, consumers spend about 159 hours watching video every month and dedicate at least a portion of that time to streaming clips. Findings suggest that TV ads will continue to be marketers' focus because this format is what customers trust most.

Here is an amazing excerpt from an interview with John Henry the new owner of The Boston Globe:

Is there anything that you were surprised to learn? Has this process changed the way you think about the Globe? "I think very differently than I did seven months ago. I used to think this was solely a move from a legacy print business to a digital future. But it's far more complicated than that. Print remains a very strong revenue generator for newspapers both in advertising and home subscriptions. The most surprising conversations have been with advertisers who have told me how effective their advertising in the Globe is for their businesses. That's a message we have to get out and we will."

Investment banker Terence Kawaja of LUMA Partners passed along his latest chart on the ad tech world. This chart looks at the world of native advertising, which is a hot topic right now. Over email, Kawaja explains, "Given how consumers ignore banner ads, these new consumer - friendly formats are proving to be the engine for how marketers can engage audiences, especially in social and mobile contexts." 

A group of newspaper publishers has put the cars.com online marketplace up for sale for as much as $3 billion, hoping to cash in on booming values for e-commerce sites, people familiar with the plans said. Moelis & Co., which is advising the Classified Ventures publishers consortium on the sale, already has begun discussions with potential bidders, which are expected to include private-equity firms and strategic investors, the people said. It is also possible that one of the publishers could raise its stake or buy out the others.

That company was Patch.

Today, many of the jobs it once offered are gone.

But what it left behind was a group of highly trained digital editors, a handful of them with aspirations higher than moving on to another media company on shaky ground.

These editors have left Patch and started their own local news ventures, or joined a fresh crop of hyperlocal startups started by others in communities around the country.

Determined to learn from the mistakes made by Patch, they are doing local news on their own terms.

But walk into any coffee shop, and it becomes clear where a company really needs to be in order to reach the average consumer: on a mobile device. As of September 2012, 85 percent of Americans own a mobile device and 45 percent of Americans own a smartphone, according to a Pew Research Center study. The phone is the new computer, the new assistant, the new brain. To reach the modern consumer, businesses need to get themselves onto all those small screens.

Translating your direct response marketing campaigns to mobile is easy with these three steps:

They come in all sizes, circulation-wise; in two forms of content, paper and digital; and in many areas of focus-local, regional, national and international. They are our newspapers and lately, they have been challenged like never before to stay as important to the world as when the first one was printed (that, by the way, is considered by most to be Germany's The Relation, first published in 1605). 

Newspaper publishers today know that great content alone is not enough to keep their publications thriving.