Category Archives: Advertising

Visualizing the World Cup – explorations in html 5, css3, jQery and more

Posted on by

world cup visualization html 5 css3

click image above to experience the World Cup Visualization…

Some of you have asked for more info about the World Cup Visualization I recreated. Honestly, go read the overview of how robby macdonell did it, that’s what I did.

All my data came from wikipedia.  I’m still adding data to this little by little as time permits.

As an aside, I’m pretty comfortable using flash and actionscript and I feel that I could have done this in flash in half the time and with the emergence of things like Smokescreen and other things not yet created I would not discount the ubiquity of Flash for the near future.

Newspaper Association of America Reports Ad Revenue Fell 27.2% in 2009

Posted on by

Newspaper print ad revenue fell 28.6% from last year (which fell 17.7% the year before).  Even more alarming is the fact that newspaper Online advertising revenue fell 11.8% (which fell 1.8% the year before).

Total ad spending in the U.S. fell 12.3% to $125.3 billion in 2009, according to a report from Kantar Media (formerly TNS Media Intelligence).

Internet display advertising was up 7.3%, and free-standing inserts, up 3.0%.

While the economy had an impact in the numbers, clearly, the business model is not working.

Cyber Monday sales could exceed $900 million this year (2009)

Posted on by

1. If your business is not on the web yet, or your site has not been redesigned in the last 2 years, you need to hop to it.

2. If you are not advertising your products and services online, then you are missing out on Billions of dollars of revenue.

“Online shopping sites offered deeper discounts and pushed new technology to connect with consumers on Cyber Monday, in what’s shaping up to be a strong post-Thanksgiving sales period for online retailers.” -read entire post at the Wall Street Journal.

Free Webinar via ComScore – State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy through Q3 2009

Posted on by

As it pertains to media news, the following is a great way to learn more about consumer sentiment and economic trends. I tune in to better gauge how e-commerce can help my customers and where they should be directing their ad spending (print, web, mobile, direct mail, etc..).

Continue reading →

Most Redditors Find Newspaper Website Page Jumps Annoying

Posted on by

Dear Washington Post and every other internet newspaper: if you have a long article, PUT IT ON ONE PAGE. My browser isn’t paper, you don’t need to break it up into 6 pages

As the title of above Reddit thread implies many newspaper news sites spread their longer articles over several pages.  It’s my opinion that they do it to drive up pageviews and advertising impressions, but in the process annoy the hell out of the reader.  While the Newspaper Association of America continues to triumphantly announce record pageviews on newspaper sites, the newspapers themselves are going bankrupt.   Hmmm… It’s time for a new strategy fellas.

My suggestion to these newspaper sites is put the articles on ONE page and increase CPM’s by reducing the total number of advertising spots on their webpages.  In other words, don’t have 12 ad spots on every damn page.   Look at Kottke.org he has ONE ad on that site (via The Deck) and it generates something like $80k year!

In the meantime people are developing workarounds for crappy user experiences by:

1. reading the article in print page view which usually puts the article on one continuous scrolling screen.

2. using the Auto Pager firefox plugin which automatically loads the next page at the bottom of the screen to create one continuous scrolling screen.

3. using ARC 90 Labs Readability tool which eliminates all ads from the screen

4. using Ad Block Plus to eliminate ALL on site advertising

5. using this GreaseMonkey Script make a multi column page

The online experience is totally different then the print reading experience.  Newspapers need to get it in their heads that what works in print does not work online.  Print best serves a Geographic Community.  The web best serves Communities of Interest.  If newspapers are selling “brand awareness” type ads, they won’t sell enough to become economically sustainable.  If they sell ads that result in conversions (sales) then they will realize higher CPM’s.  Newspapers however, must dismantle their behemoth catch all news sites and create community of interest news sites to best position such conversion ads.  The advertiser and newspaper will both benefit.  The current online advertising and user experience strategies cannot go on.

Advertising in the Internet Paradigm is Free or Damn Close To It

Posted on by

Making commercials for the web -from SethGodin’s blog

The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one. The same way that there’s very little correlation between popular websites and big companies, we’ll see that the most popular commercials get done by little shops that have nothing to lose.

Businesses that rely primarily on advertising revenue take note.  I’m looking at you Mr. Newspaper, and MS. Magazine and… oh well you get it.  The internet paradigm breaks traditional busines models by undermining prohibitive cost structures.  I don’t need a printing press.  I don’t need a television studio.  All I need is a computer, camera, and passion.

How will you adjust?

Google to offer Premium Advertising for Select News Sites

Posted on by

Eric Schmidt on Google’s New Plan for the News -from TheWrap

Sharon Waxman who writes Waxword for the Wrap… ugh, we get it we get it, has an interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt who reveals that in about 6 months Google will launch a premium ad service for “premium content”.  The pilot news outlets to get this treatment will be the NYtimes and WashingtonPost.

The participating news outlets won’t get direct revenue bumps but the theory is that they will enjoy greater traffic from search.

In my opinion and Google’s too, websites need to figure out a way to better connect with their audience to create a community and lessen the reliance on search for revenue generation.

Sustainable Revenue Idea For Newspaper Publishers

Posted on by

“What does your audience want from you – and do you know what they will pay for?”.  -from PWC

Many newspapers have not honestly asked themselves this question because if they did they would be the largest creators of business websites in their DMA.  As a consultant I work with local business owners to do things like build / rebuild their websites, add their sites and business to listing sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp and others.

Newspapers should be doing this, not me.  It should be a big, growing part of their revenue stream.  I know of only one newspaper doing something close to this and that is Cox Ohio publishing.  Here’s an excerpt from a quick interview with Internet General Manager Ray Marcano from Cox Ohio Publishing explaining more.

End America East Session Follow up with Ray Marcano:

RI- Looking forward, what will your main revenue streams be?
RM-  Direct sales not tied to print / classified upsells.  Our direct sales are up 30% year over year.

RI- Tell me about your Ad Studio business.  When did it launch?  Who is using it?  Is it a major revenue stream?
RM- We started that business in 2008.  Our biggest customers are media companies outsourcing to COX for ad design.  It is a significant new revenue stream.

RI- Is an online only presence like the what the Seattle P-I did anything your company has considered?
RM – No because our product is thriving, that’s not to say we don’t have stand alone online sites because we do have 937moms.com and activedayton.com

RELATED:

Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers

Part 2 More Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers where I talk about setting up an advertising fair for for courting local businesses.

Second Street Media Solutions Owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard Discuss Upickem online contesting platform.

The Bakersfield Californian to Deploy TweenTribune

Posted on by

The Bakersfield Californian joins The Virginia-Pilot as early adopters of the Alan Jocobson inspired news platform, TweenTribune. Both newspapers are using the site to revitalize their moribund NIE programs.  The platform is web based, safe for kids, NIE compliant, and monetizable.  If that is not incentive enough to consider it, the Audit Bureau of Circulations will cease to count NIE newspaper copies as a form of paid circulation in the beginning of 2010.   The TweenTribune sites will fill that need.

Though TweenTribune is a niche site for kids, Alan’s concept focuses on newspapers publishing many “community of interest” news sites rather than a single geographic community newspaper website.  Currently, this is a more common strategy for magazine publishers and blog networks, but the idea is to publish many independent niche news sites to focus readership, drive engagement and command higher CPM’s from advertisers.

In an email with Alan he emphasized that newspaper publishers are interested in the TweenTribune platform as a model for lots of niche sites – “…the number we’re throwing around is 1,000 sites. They want to use TweenTribune to test the efficacy of that strategy”. Continue reading →

Interview With Alan Jacobson – TweenTribune News Site

Posted on by

This interview took place between TweenTribune‘s managing editor Alan Jacobson and I at this year’s America East Newspaper Operations and Technology conference.  If Alan’s name sounds familiar it is because he is the president of BrassTacksDesign, which has provided editorial, advertising and technical support to newspapers from New England to New Zealand for almost 20 years.

RI- What is TweenTribune and how did your idea for it come about?
AJ- Lets go all the way back to 1996 when I wrote an article for Brass Tacks Design entitled Online newspapers: Where’s the revenue? In that article I emphasize the importance for websites to build on a “community of interest” rather than a geographic community such as newspapers have traditionally served.   The points being, advertisers would be eager to advertise beside niche content rather than generic news on a website AND the internet is better suited at targeting “communities of interest” than printed newspapers.  Newspapers should have 1000 niche sites, not 1 mammoth site attempting to do everything.

I am the father of two tweens and being familiar with the Newspapers In Education (NIE) program it was clear to me that something better needed to be created for all parties involved.  The current NIE setup is a disaster.  The print product they are pushing not only costs publishers millions of dollars, it is attempting to get kids interested in a product that is going away and filled with adult content.  Their online solutions are equally bad.  Those sites are not designed with the kid’s best interests in mind.  The sites are poorly designed and have wacky logos and colors…  I actually did design testing with my kids and their friends, and my friends kids… you know what they like?  A well laid out, clean site just like the rest of us! Continue reading →

This is how Social Media really works by Matt Haughey

Posted on by

This is how Social Media really works -from aWholeLottaNothing

Metafilter founder Matt Haughey has a recent blog post about ditching “social media marketing gurus” and focusing on creating quality stuff people will write and talk about.

…there are thousands of people all over twitter and blogs that think throwing thousands of dollars at people that describe themselves as a “marketing guru” is the way to increase their company sales. I’m here to say I think that may very well be a waste of money, time, and energy.

I agree with him almost entirely but would say that there are cetain products and services that cannot wait for the “long tail” to promote, like a bank’s yield on their CD’s.  By the time a blogger wrote about it and it got to the masses who would benefit, the yeild might have changed.  Overall great article though.

Digital Advertising 101 for Editors and Entrepreneurial Journalists at Columbia Journalism

Posted on by

Check out the website at www.journalism.columbia.edu/ContinuingEducation to learn more about spring offerings and register.

Digital Advertising 101
Workshop: May 4, 2009
7 p.m. to 10 p.m

Learn about the business of advertising in the digital age in this May 4 workshop at the Graduate School of Journalism. Industry experts will provide editors and entrepreneurial journalists with a concrete understanding of digital advertising sales in order to better navigate business decisions that are affecting the editorial side of journalism. Participants will leave with basic tools to integrate advertising into the consumer experience without compromising editorial integrity or interfering with the editorial product. They will also learn how to perform a self-diagnostic regarding their organizations’ readiness to confront the new realities of the digital age.

Register for this workshop
http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/cs/ContentServer/jrn/1165270051272/page/1212610911553/simplepage.htm

Second Street Media Solutions Owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard Discuss Upickem

Posted on by

Interview with Second Street Media Solutions Co-owners Matt Coen and Doug Villhard to learn more about their fastest growing product, Upickem, which is an online contesting platform.

RI - Simply publishing content on a website is not enough.  How does Upickem bring news sites into the internet paradigm?
MC - By virtue of the way contests work, ie. participation, we make newspaper news sites much more interactive with their target community.

RI - How do you drive user engagement? How do you build communities?
MC - The contests engage a passionate community. “cutest dog contest” for example generated 4.5 million pageviews, 6800 dog photo submissions, over 1million votes, and 15,000 registered users for The Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The users who register to participate in the contest provide the paper with their email info that can be used to drive participation in future contests. Continue reading →

More Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers

Posted on by

The original post from October 2008 Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers touches on increasing sponsorships vs cpm, building experiences around your top draws, and improving navigation for better user engagement.

The economy has really shit the bed since my first post on advertising. With that in mind, this article will concern itself with bringing value to the businesses operating in your distribution area. This focus should bring in new business and reinforce the idea that your newspaper has its community’s best interest in mind. The only way this will work is if the publisher and sales manager green light this project. Change and leadership in this case must come from the top down and yes, they should be at the event, shaking hands, answering questions.  Newspapers can no longer sit around waiting for money to come to them.

The purpose of business is to create a customer. -Peter Drucker

When? ASAP

What? I propose a marketing fair.  Think of a job fair, except your entire sales staff will fill their niche booths to listen to their business owners’ (customers’) concerns.

Who? for any business in the community your newspaper serves.

Where? Rent out a big cheap place like a high school gymnasium or holiday inn. Set the event up in such a way that that people can ask your newspaper sales staff questions (all hands on deck) about your media kit, your readership, your services offered, costs, and then get real face to face answers (and hopefully ad buys on the spot).

Why? The purpose is to reconnect or stay connected with your community. Show them you care about their financial well being. Do Not Pitch your products to them. Have your sales force meet these business owners one on one. Listen to their problems, their concerns, their successes and failures.  Let them do all the talking.  Have your sales force take copious notes to find out what your businesses want from you.

As I have come to discover through the services I provide to my local chamber of commerce members, I think newspapers too will find out that most of your potential advertisers suffer from the same problems. Common concerns that I hear?

NEEDS:

1. Newspaper advertising is too expensive and complicated.

2. The cost structure / sizing in their media kits looks like the table of elements.

3. I only want to advertise next to relevant content.

4. I want to market my self, my own website.

5. I did it once and it was horrible, I lost money.

6. I wanted an ad on their website, but they could not tell me where exactly it would appear.

7. How can I use the internet to drive business to my company?

Now here comes your moment to shine Mr. Newspaper Publisher.  Right these wrongs.  Add value to your operation by filling the unmet needs of your business community.

FILLING THE NEEDS:

1-3. Innovate your advertising platform to make it easier for readers and small business owners to place ads online and offline.  Models to ape?  Craigslist & Google ( you know, the ones everyone uses).

4. They want websites?  Build them websites!  Offer the service using your in-house team.  Don’t have an in-house team of developers?  You can partner with a local shop or an Indian firm to crank out quality sites for $300 a pop, add 100% margin and you’re making big money!  95% of the small business clients I deal with need a new website.  Their existing sites are usually real crap.  Build them a site that gets customers in their door and everyone wins.

I can’t stress enough how important this is.  This is a newspaper’s biggest potential new revenue stream.

5-6.  SEE #1-3 above.

7. Some of the greatest kudos I’ve gotten while consulting have come from just sitting with a business owner and helping them list their business on all the free listing sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, YellowPages, etc…

REALIZING VALUE:

Your newspaper is now generating new value by filling an unmet need for your business community.

1. You will realize greater print and online sales.

2. You will get a better feel for the needs of your business community.

3. You will create new revenue streams outside of simple display advertising.

MORE REVENUE IDEAS:

1. That unused space on your website’s login form?  It could now be generating $100 per month from sponsorship via your local Locksmith.  Are you The Washington Post or The New York Times?  That space should be going for $1000 per day to Sargent Locks or  ADT.

2. Publish a twice annual town guide distributed to the local community college.  In it you can find coupons and ads for every single eatery and club in your area.

3. Your newspaper now has 3 people on staff to work with business owners to design and develop business websites for them, list their businesses, and learn how online marketing works.   You’re thinking of adding the service to readers to start their own blogs and sites.

4. The success of the #3 above has led to you launching a “SeekingAlpha” type platform for publishing original content.  (seeking alpha pays nothing for the 175 posts they put up every day by the way).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this and it has helped.  Here is the link to the original post from October 2008 Free Advertising Ideas For Newspaper Publishers.

RELATED:

Advertising in the Internet Paradigm

Q4 2008 Display Ad Price Index – News Sites Lower

Posted on by

The Newspaper Association of America reported on January 29th that news sites are growing:

The average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by nearly 7.3 million in 2008 to 67.3 million visitors, an increase of 12.1 percent over 2007, according to a new report by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.  -continue reading.

This is good news except for the fact that Display Ad rates declined at a steeper rate!  I’ve gone over before how newspapers seeking vanilla audience growth for profitability is an economically unsustainable revenue model, so I won’t bore you with that again.  Below is the latest Display Ad data.

Free to the public, PubMatic.com publishes the most complete information regarding Display Ad price performance that I know of.  At the end of every Quarter they publish their research in a convenient PDF available for download HERE, in metaprinter’s sidebar, and on PubMatic.com where you can also find their latest WhitePaper on eliminating Ad Network “daisy chains” for better performance.  I recommend bookmarking their site and if you are a publisher then go sign up for Pubmatic’s Ad Platform to minimize the complexity of selling advertising on your web site.  Trying it out is FREE (at the time of this writing).

How it’s calculated:

The pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks’ share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers. The pricing data is not representative of the performance of any particular ad network. -more detail in the PDF

Key Takeaways from Q4 2008: Continue reading →

New York Times Super Bowl Commercial? – What Would It Say?

Posted on by

This commercial for The New York Times is from 1986. Replace the newspaper that the family is holding with an iPhone and / or Blackberry. Does the newspaper’s value proposition still hold true? What is my incentive now to buy a print subscription? How does The New York Times add to my self actualization?

In 1986 I would read the comics and flip through the entire newspaper “window shopping”. Now I can do this more effectively online. So what ‘need’ is The New York Times now filling and what is the value of that need? Is the it valueless?

Chris Anderson, author of  The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More and Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price, has an excellent article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal entitled The Economics of Giving It Away. In it he give a great simple example of the economics affecting the pricing power of newspaper content.

Digital goods — from music and video to Wikipedia — can be produced and distributed at virtually no marginal cost, and so, by the laws of economics, price has gone the same way, to $0.00.

If The New York Times had the money, what would their Super Bowl commercial say? Would it say, “Please bail us out. You NEED US!” Has the value proposition changed since 1986?

Podcast – Video Game Revenue Models To Save The New York Times?

Posted on by

I am Following up my original post below about micropayments with this interview I conducted with GamesOverGirls.com founder Jack Bartolucci.  The purpose of this interview is to learn more about the different revenue streams game companies and console manufacturers use to make money.

Through the interview I learn that money comes not just from selling the games themselves but also:

1. Add ons (like buying new songs for RockBand via their in game store – 28million downloads since Dec.2008)
2. New Chapters (like for Grand Theft Auto 4)
3. Peripherals (like game specific controllers)
4. In-game advertising  (like the ads Barack Obama ran in Burnout Paradise and 17 other games)

And the point-of-purchase is really simple.  Depending on what system you are using it’s either done online or right through the console.  Regardless of what system you are using all the major gaming systems work like E-ZPass. Just set up a one time account with your credit card and all purchases from that point on are transacted with one click.  iTunes works similarly.  Super Easy, Super Convenient.

What newspapers are doing now is not working.  If NYTimes.com can’t break even with advertising revenue, who can?  LATimes.com thinks they can, but they can’t.

How can newspaper sites use these types of revenue streams to make money?  As I say below, I would have paid 10cents to watch the Mike Tyson interview.  What would NYT need to do to get my account info to enable such a “one click transaction”?  How about having the video cut out halfway through at which point you are asked to submit any monetary amount above zero cents? Just like the the videogame companies you would only have to input your credit card info One Time.  After that, transactions occur through one simple click as described earlier.

Obviously you can’t do this with every single article, but you can absolutely do it for every single video and audio slideshow.  Make sure to allow comments and ratings viewable by everyone so people will be even more inclined to pay to view the multimedia piece.  If people don’t want to pay?  That’s their loss, you’ve got bills to pay NYT.

Here’s how Nintendo and Activision are doing compared to NYT stock over the last 2 years.

The interview is safe for work until about halfway through when Jack decides he wants to interview me and we wind up talking about all sorts of things we are not qualified to talk about like Professional Journalism, Sexism, Maria Bartiromo, and Race Relations in the USA.  But it sure is funny to listen to and if you are a gamer and not easily scared by political incorrectness then head on over to GamesOverGirls.comfor more.

[display_podcast]

Continue reading →

Google Eliminates Newspaper Print Ads

Posted on by

Turning the page on Print Ads -from GoogleBlog

In the last few months, we’ve been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners. While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we — or our partners — wanted. As a result, we will stop offering Print Ads on February 28. For advertisers who have campaigns already booked, we will place their ads through March 31.

I’ve said over and over again, Newspapers need to do some serious soul searching to figure out what their core competency is now in the internet paradigm.  What Need are they filling and how can they monetize that need?  Clearly no general interest newspaper has answered this question.

Traditional Advertising Fail! Burger King & Facebook Win!

Posted on by

At 9:29am today Cnet reported that Burger King’s new Facebook marketing campaign has been launched and is quite witty.

Burger King created a Facebook application called Whopper Sacrifice wherein if you install their APP, then delete 10 of your Facebook friends, you get a coupon for a free Whopper.

Already by 8am though, BurgerKing Sacrificial Virgins Group had been set up for the sole purpose of friending and unfriending strangers. Brilliant! No messing with real friends! Continue reading →

Online Advertising Prediction for 2009 – It Fails

Posted on by

This could come back to bite me in the ass but I’m going to make a prediction for 2009 that online display advertising and all that other junk like pop-ups fails big time this year.

Why Fail?
1) No one pays any attention to online display advertising. 2) There’s too much of it floating around. CPM’s are dropping 20% quarter over quarter according to Pubmatic data (PDF). 3) The economy stinks. Businesses will cut back on advertising and realize there is little to no change in their business sales because of it. Continue reading →

Cincinnati Enquirer Eliminating Print Classifieds – In Line With 2007 Mission

Posted on by

According to this Bizjournals.com article The Cincinnati Enquirer “will cut the number of days it runs classified ads” to reduce costs!! For the life of me, I cannot find the original “letter to readers” from the Cincinnati Enquirer. If any has a link please share it.

Keep the following in mind when considering this announcement from Cincinnati:

2007 Annual Report • Become the digital destination for local news and information in all our markets. • Create new business opportunities in the digital space through internal innovation, acquisitions or affiliations. • Maintain strong financial discipline throughout our operations. • Strengthen the foundation of the company by finding, developing and retaining the best and brightest employees through a robust Leadership and Diversity program.

The word ‘paper’ does not appear once, so it’s no secret the direction that Gannett is taking. Continue reading →

VistaPrint Revenues Will Exceed New York Times Advertising Revenue in 2011

Posted on by

In a December 5, 2008 interview with WhatTheyThink.com staff, VistaPrint CEO Robert Keane expressed his opinion that he is “extremely pessimistic about the economy”.  VistaPrint (VPRT) is a leading online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers to 16 million customers worldwide with over $400 million in annual sales as of the last fiscal year.  They cater to small businesses and their average order generates just $33 in revenue. I recommend reading the entire WTT interview here but to summarize Keane’s comments, Continue reading →

Would You Prefer a Newspaper With or Without Advertisements?

Posted on by

If confronted with the decision to receive a identical newspapers, one with advertisements in it and one with NO advertisements in it, which would you select?
if your job influences your answer, please disclose.

Clarification added 20 hours ago:

STOP adding your own caveats!!!! This is a theoretical question.

If confronted with the decision to receive identical newspapers (im presenting you one in one hand and one in the other hand), the only difference being one with advertisements in it and one with NO advertisements in it, which would you select?

Clarification added 1 minute ago:

Wow, ok lets try this…. the situation happens on a planet where everything is free. the only decision point is that one paper contains advertisements the other does not…

I asked the above question on linkedin and half the answers to the question are, “a newspaper without ads is impossible”!!!  Thanks buddy.  Oh, wait, you didn’t even come close to answering the question.

ugh…

GO Here if you wan to join this ugliness

As of December 12, 2008 13people have answered.

9 prefer a newspaper with advertisements
0 prefer a newspaper without advertisements
4 people are completely incapable of answering my question

The question was posed after I read this interesting fact: “90% of readers prefer a newspaper with ads”
Newspaper National Network NNN “wantedness” spells trouble

Newspaper National Network NNN “wantedness” spells trouble

Posted on by

While researching information from my Thesis I ran across this unsettling bit of data from the Newspaper National Network website. It appears on the homepage in the green sidebar.

“Ad wantedness” is highest in newspapers. In fact, one recent study, reported that 90% of consumers prefer newspapers with ads to newspapers without ads. Newspapers are the primary source for shopping information for most product categories, with 52% of people seeing ads as “valuable” when planning their shopping. -Jason E. Klein President and CEO Newspaper National Network, LP

The statement is aimed at marketing people and is meant to sell them on the benefits of advertising in a newspaper.  I thought maybe I misread it but sure enough, holy cow!  This is extremely troubling news for newspapers.  When I read that first sentence I interpret it as, “only 10% of newspaper readers purchase the paper purely for it’s content -consumers prefer newspapers with ads to newspapers without ads”.

Continue reading →

Internet Advertising Revenues in Q3 ’08 Increase – Except Newspapers

Posted on by

The Krugman Paradox in practice

11% Increase from Q3 ’07, Up Slightly from Q2 ’08 Despite U.S. Economic Woes
NEW YORK, NY (November 20, 2008) — The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007. While double-digit annual growth continues, the quarter-to-quarter curve remains relatively flat compared to recent past performance. The Q3 2008 figures, published in the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, are 2 percent higher than the Q2 2008 results. Set against strong economic headwinds in the U.S. economy, Q3 ’08’s $5.9 billion represents nonetheless the second-highest quarter results ever. For the first nine months of 2008, revenues totaled $17.3 billion, up from $15.2 billion in the same period a year ago and surpassing the record set in the first nine months of 2007 by nearly 14 percent. -from IAB

From NAA/ Clickz:

Print and online newspaper advertising revenue plunged 18.11 percent in the third quarter of this year — the worst decline by far in the nearly four decades the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has been tracking quarterly performance. After its first ever reported drop in online ad revenue in Q2 2008, the industry drifted another few notches in Q3. According to the Newspaper Association of America, online paper sites brought in $749.8 million in Q3, a drop of 3 percent from a year before.

From NAA/ E&P:

The number of unique visitors to newspaper Web sites hit another record high in Q3, up 15.7% to 68.3 million compared to the same period a year ago.

The fundamental problem of newspapers on the internet – The Krugman Paradox

Posted on by

Updated: December 9, 2008


I introduce you to the fundamental problem of newspapers on the internet – The Krugman Paradox - named by me after watching PetMeds.com ads appear next to Paul Krugman for three days after it was announced he won a Nobel Prize. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a better way to monetize his presence on NYTimes.com. Further investigation revealed that the Krugman problem was not unique. Here goes, I want feedback.

Definition:
The Krugman Paradox is a phenomenon referring to newspapers’ websites and the site’s inability to produce economically sustainable advertising revenue, despite their highest audience reach in the history of their industry. The paradox indicates that newspapers must increase the effectiveness of their online advertising if this is to be their main revenue stream.

Continue reading →

Advertising – news venues less effective than all forms of media combined

Posted on by

Below Excerpts from: Experian Simmons Multi-Media Engagement Study (MME)

Only 28% of the audience of an average news program, website or magazine gets valuable information about products and services advertised there, making news venues less effective at conveying ad messages than all forms of media combined, according to consumer research from Experian Simmons.

Among the TV and magazine news properties evaluated, Experian Simmons found that the most talked about news property is The Drudge Report, followed by The New York Times, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The O’Reilly Factor and The Wall Street Journal.

About the research: Study findings are taken from the latest release of the Experian Simmons Multi-Media Engagement Study (MME) conducted between July 2007 and June 2008.

Newspaper Job Boards, Reconnect With Your Community in 2009

Posted on by

In my thesis research I revisited some old stats I had on job listings and was shocked at how little those numbers changed. The US state department predicts another 1million jobs lost in the united states in 2009 if things don’t turn around soon. With that in mind, wouldn’t it be wise for newspapers to bring their job board costs in line with Craigslist?

In 2007 Craigslist was charging either zero or $25 to post jobs depending on the city. A quick look at newspapers sites reveals that 1. They partnered with monster, Careerbuilder, or Hotjobs for their Jobs section. 2. They charge on average $400 to post a job! How the heck is this justified when looking at the reach of craigslist vs. everyone else?

As for Website reach, here is 2007

—————————————————————————– Continue reading →

Forget Newspapers, All Advertising Reliant Businesses Are Hurting

Posted on by

Just because it’s “new media” or something other than newspapers, doesn’t mean it’s immune to advertising revenue declines.  Keep the following in mind when bemoaning the accelerated slide in newspaper revenue.  So what can be done to offset declining advertising revenue?  Paid online access?  The Wall Street Journal does it, to the tune of ~$100million a year!

1. Gawker Media is consolidating their Silicon Valley blog Valleywag into Gawker.com.

2. Conde Nast has laid off roughly 60 people November 11th from CondeNet, the company’s internet division.

3. Al Gore is doing no better!!!  Current Media, the cable network co-founded by Al Gore also just laid off about 60 people.

So should Newspaper sites go for a paid online revenue model?  The current market conditions are highlighting a problem everyone knew already existed.  Having only one revenue stream is an untenable long term business model.  Newspapers need to figure out how to give away the bulk of their information, and make their most valuable offerings, subscriber based.

WSJ.com does this quite well.  Can your paper’s site do this?  If your paper has nothing worth charging a subsciber for, then it’s time to take a long hard look at what value you are providing your readers and subscribers.

Historical Moment Temporarily Lifts Newspaper Demand

Posted on by

The newspaper industry’s first foray into Print-On-Demand proved to be a disaster.  The historical election of Barack Obama as the first African-American of the United States seems to have taken the newspaper industry by surprise. Monumental events cannot sustain this industry alone. Next week when everyone has gotten over their memento hangover and the prices for stolen newspapers subsides on Ebay, the newspaper must return to the reality that print circulation is falling off a cliff.

————————————————————————– Continue reading →

Google Pushing Advertising Innovation and Driving Revenues in a Bad Economy

Posted on by

As the publisher of this news site, it was reassuring by an email I received this morning.  As someone interested in newspaper innovation, it gave me pause to wonder at what my own beloved industry was doing to innovate and meet demands in this new information paradigm.  When I see PetMed ads. appear next to nobel prize winner Paul Krugman on NYTimes.com, I know more can be done to improve ad performance.  Here is the email I was sent:

—————————————————————– Continue reading →

Flexible Display Technology Will Not Generate Print Revenues

Posted on by

Newspapers charge advertisers hefty sums of money for advertising in their print products. A one-time full page advertisement in The New York Times can easily cost $160,000. How many people read it / saw it? Half a million? One million? One million times 2.5? who knows?  That’s the beauty of paper. It cannot generate accurate advertising metrics.  Unfortunately for newspapers, print circulation is falling like a… finish this phrase.

———————————————————————– Continue reading →

APT, Yahoo’s New Digital Ad Platform – Good for Newspapers?

Posted on by

I would say that most newspapers around the world are not suffering because they lost out on worldwide advertising. Newspapers have lost touch with the communities they used to serve so well.  If anything, Newspapers need to be developing their own LOCAL advertising platform.  I often see new 3rd party applications being utilized by newspapers for a share of their revenue stream and I wonder what the long-term implications are to the owners’ equity.

Yahoo also hopes the new platform will help the ailing newspaper industry, by transforming poorly performing remnant advertising into higher performing revenue streams. “We touch more users around the world than any publisher could dream to do,” says John Slade, Yahoo’s Vice President of Product Management. Continue reading →