Heading to Borrell’s first conference this afternoon and very much looking forward to some provocative sessions over the next two days.
I plan to blog about it using my WP for Android app. We’ll see if I have the patience for one-finger typing and odd auto-completes.
The recent drumbeat of charging for access to newspaper Web sites hit a high note with the headline: Hearst to charge for online access.
Of course, what was missed in that article was the fact that Hearst will increase the value of their content before they attempt to charge for any of it which means they plan to hire more journalists and editors.
I wonder after watching this video of Hearst CEO talking about increasing subscription rates, if Hearst means to close off its online opportunity as some would think or to just logically put value on all of its content.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid16423197001
I’m biased on this issue because I work at a media company that sells behavorial targeted banner ads and other online advertising, but I sincerely write the following as a consumer:
Advertising is important to me. It tells me what’s on sale, where and when. It tells me about new opportunities and new fashion. It helps me understand the better deals and it helps me save money (especially online advertising where I can so easily compare products and pricing).
So, when someone who is in a position of power, says something on my behalf that is just wrong I have to blog about it.
Here’s the full statement as written in MediaPost about Google’s new opt-out behavorial targeting functionality:
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, along with the Center for Digital Democracy, spurred much of the recent public debate about online advertising and privacy by filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in 2006.
Fazlullah added that she was disappointed with Google’s decision to continue with an opt-out regime–which means that only the most sophisticated, privacy-aware consumers will make use of the new controls. “If they asked people, ‘Do you really want to be followed around and served ads,’ most people would say no. Most of us don’t really value advertising in any solid way.”
Really? Most of us don’t really value advertising in any solid way. Wow. That’s a pretty damning statement of an entire industry. Did she do a study? How does she know this?
I for one value advertising in a very solid way. It pays for our journalism and it gives me information about what’s on sale at the grocery store. Maybe that’s not important to Ms. Fazlullah, but it is to me and I would venture to guess it’s important to a lot of people.
I just finished reading Jeff Jarvis‘ What Would Google Do and recommend this book to anyone who cares about succeeding today and in the future.
I was just blown away by Jarvis’ analysis of media, education, advertising, retail, manufacturing, services, health care, and the financial markets.
Jarvis tells us that in this new world open is the new currency. You make your information, your products and your services open to your customers and you will thrive assuming you have the information, products and services they want. In the old world, competitive advantage hinged on hoarding information and knowledge and controlling its release. In the Google-like world, that’s suicide.
After all, how can you be found through search if you’re hiding your value to the network?
I’ll post more thoughts here over time especially how this thinking pertains to the newspaper industry – which is my industry and the one I obviously care the most about.
The New York Times is looking to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox and New England Sports Ventures according to this Reuters article. In the article, the author writes that in today’s market it’s hard to sell newspapers because “Their valuations are at historic lows, but most bidders regard them as toxic because of their low prospects for growth. ”
I agree that newsPAPERS have low prospects for growth given the now undeniable shift from newspaper advertising to the Internet especially from the high-margin classified business. But, I don’t agree that media companies who happen to own newspapers have low prospects for growth.
At Times-Shamrock’s 15 Web sites (that we track), we attract more than a million unique monthly visitors. That’s a fairly compelling audience that local advertisers in those markets would most certainly benefit from attracting. Add in the fact that those Web sites are more than just the local source of information — they have local video about local newsmakers, high school sports statistics and game analysis, information about advertisers, maps, search, archives, etc. — and the story local media companies who happen to also own profitable newspaper operations is pretty bright in the growth area.
IMHO
Kathy
Nice piece about the decision on nytimes.com.
This is a helpful post about the importance of relevant links.
This was written by Curt Viebranz on a scrap piece of paper to Dave Morgan who I always thought to be the smartest online advertising visionary around. Turns out Curt wrote that to Dave in 2000 about Dave’s 2001 budgeting for Real Media Inc., the company Dave founded and was running at the time.
You can read the story here. I’m underscoring the quote because I’ve seen so many newspaper publishers budget up their 3% ad revenue and 1.5% circulation revenue year after year only to see shortfalls of double-digits. They never wanted to budget to reality.
I hope that’s changing now that reality is as stark as it can be.
After my third son was born, I decided to sell all of my maternity clothes. I’m a bit of a clothes hog and had a good variety in different sizes so I figured I could sell all of the pieces on eBay.
I took pictures of every piece of clothing, grouped like items together, wrote descriptions and uploaded everything to eBay.
Labor Cost: At least 20 hours of my time at a conservative $15 an hour = $300
Listing fees: $29.49
Total cost to post to eBay: $329.49
Total revenue from eBay: $37.92
Profit(loss): ($291.57)
Since I only sold 8 of the 26 sets listed on eBay, I created a photo gallery and sent the link around to stay-at-home moms in my area. At this point, I was in the hole so I just wanted to get the clothes out of the corner of my bedroom and get some money for them. I was willing to sell the whole lot for just $150 (or less!).
I wasn’t getting any bites through viral marketing so I decided to place a free ad in the Pocono Record and poconorecord.com (where I also happen to work). The placement took less than five minutes. Here’s the ad copy:
Mostly MOTHERHOOD brands
Entire lot, $150, 28 shirts, 4 skirts
13 pants, 2 shorts. Pick-up only
Call 570-582-3814
I couldn’t fit the long link to the gallery in the lines allotted but two days after the ad ran in PRINT, I got a call from a woman in nearby Tannersville, PA who was interested in buying the whole lot. I e-mailed her the link to the gallery, she called me last night after checking out the pictures, and we’re finalizing the deal at noon tomorrow when the buyer comes to pick up the clothes.
Print ad cost: Free
Total revenue: $75
(Okay, I’m not counting the $300 in labor because I already spent that on eBay.)
Lesson: Print still drives quality leads. Online works well as a tool for more information. Why can’t we have unlimited pictures with our free ads online? Oh, because our online classified marketplace is so tightly tied to print we can’t leverage what’s good about online while also leveraging what’s good about print. We have to fix that.
And, eBay is over-rated if you have a lot of stuff and no time to spend learning the ropes.
This chart is from Godin’s presentation today showing the Old Ways and the New Ways.
