As Rupert Murdoch presses ahead with News Corp.‘s offer to buy Dow Jones, the monthly ad revenue picture has made the primary part of the acquisition target look somewhat anemic: DJ said ad revenue for The Wall Street Journal fell 12.2 percent in April on a 12.7 percent drop in ad volume. The company pinned the falling ad revenues to reduced media spending in technology, financial and general advertising, though partially offset by a slight 1.7 percent growth in classified ads. In February, the Journal’s ad revenue slid 10.0 percent a 6.6 percent decrease in volume. At the time, DJ said the declines were due to softness in the technology, financial, general and classified advertising categories.

Getting back to April, the story was different at Barron’s, which posted total ad revenue up 45.5 percent on a 41.5 percent increase in ad pages. On a per issue basis, total advertising pages increased 13.2 percent due to a greater amount of financial services advertising. The company’s local media group, which includes its community newspapers, was the the only unit to report online ad revenue. And no wonder: online ad revenue for local media rose 51 percent, while the other categories saw decreases across the board: classified (down 16.9 percent), display (down 5.7 percent) and non-daily (down 20.1 percent) advertising revenue. Release