The Modern Journalist

Ads: You Can’t Do It Like Print

Ever since John edited my book proposal, I’ve been thinking about what he said: your thesis is that each medium has to operate in its native state.

When he said that to me, it was so glaringly obvious that I knew it had to be true. I’ve been trying to figure out how to simply identify and then explain what went wrong with the news. Since then, I’ve filtered almost every piece of information I’ve come across through that lens.

This past weekend, four disparate pieces of information about advertising hit my Reader and I knew that I’d hit upon a fundamental truth: the advertising model is broken.

I’d said as much in this post, explaining why Craigslist wasn’t the real problem with newspapers and revenue. There is money to be had online. I know this. I’ve experienced it. More importantly, Web-centric companies have proven there is money to be made.

Even the Internet Advertising Bureau said there is money to made to the tune of $21 billion last year. While it’s true that 40 percent is search and Google takes a lion’s share of that, the point is that Google takes that money because they found one path to making money. Ebay and Amazon, for instance, have found another way: sell products.

Newspapers can do that too. I’ve covered that topic before with discussing on print on-demand. I won’t cover that again here. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First you have to buy into the idea that advertising online is broken. Not just because the banner ad is dead thanks to Readers, ad blocking software and java-script disabling, all of which are true. you also have to believe that the fundamental idea that the CPM-based model doesn’t work.

If you don’t want to click through those links, let’s just pose a hypothetical where we accept that the current advertising model doesn’t translate from print to online. We need to find new ways.

It’s not enough to simply open up your archives and place as much content as possible while building an aggregation network that you can sell national advertising across. The New York Times has done just that but makes just a bit more than twice what Facebook does, without ever creating one scrap of original content or actually building and software applications.

In other words, the Times — our venerable institution — has spend millions trying a variety of ways to monetize through banner advertising and with much less effort, Facebook is nearly halfway to catching up with them.

In other words, it’s time for newspapers to do a few things with their ad model:

1. Jeff Jarvis said — and Chris Brogan seconded — media organizations should use software agents to let the news find the eyeballs;
2. Stop giving your inventory away for free. Every pixel on your site should have a monetary value placed on it. If you don’t know what that value is, then stop complaining that you can’t make money and figure it out;
3. Remember that the most successful business models online involve selling actual products: microsites, custom publishing, physical products, databases
4. Don’t let your ad sales team tell you they don’t know how to sell online. Either train them or fire them.
5. If publishers don’t understand technology, hire someone to work with you to develop products. Don’t outsource and third-party your content. When the market crashes for banners, you’ll find yourself locked into contracts.
6. Remember that people use the Web differently than they use print. Have two products that do different things. You aren’t cannibalizing, you are optimizing.