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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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”.

To learn more about Alan and TweenTribune read this recent interview I completed with him at this year’s America East Newspaper Conference and Visit the TweenTribune site.

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About TweenTribune

TweenTribune gives media companies a way to reach young people and foster a daily news habit. With TweenTribune, newspapers can monetize Newspapers in Education and broadcasters can promote their brands. Both newspapers and TV stations can upload their own unique content via an easy-to-use interface. Local news is posted beneath the “Your town” link, at right.

TweenTribune delivers locally targeted online ads, but also provides a unique means of delivering targeted ads in print via the reports the site produces for each student. All advertising is targeted geographically and demographically, with far more precision than behavior targeting offered by Yahoo and Google. Ads can be served up in print, on webpages, via email and TXT.

For more information and a demonstration of targeted advertising, contact Alan Jacobson at 757.622.8112 or alan@tweentribune.com