ITZ Publishing

Google’s consumer surveys are bringing in one publisher $5,000 a month

Read the original post at: http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/04/12/googles-consumer-surveys-are-bringing-in-one-publisher-5000-a-month/

12TH APRIL 2012 by NANCY MESSIEH

Back in March, we told you about one of Google’s latest products – self-serve consumer surveys. According to Journalism.co.uk, one small US publisher has added a neat $5,000 a month to its revenue, thanks to the product.

In case you missed it, this is how the the service works, available only to US publishers for the time being:

1. You create online surveys to gain consumer insight
2. People complete questions to access premium content
3. Publishers get paid as their visitors answer
4. You get nicely aggregated and analyzed data

Google gets $0.10 per question from market research companies, while online publishers walk away with half of that. Google does place a condition, that if readers don’t want to answer the question, the publisher has to provide an alternative such as signing up for an email alert.

The Texas Tribune is one of about twenty publishers who have signed on to use the service, along with Pandora, AdWeek, The New York Daily News, and others.

The Texas Tribune, however, has actually been using it for the past eight months, long before Google publicly announced it.

The surveys have been placed in the newspaper’s Data section which brings in 60% of the site’s 600,000 unique visitors per month, mostly through search engines. It’s that 60% of the Texas Tribune’s readers, coming in specifically via a search engine, who will see the Google-powered survey.

To gain access to the content they were looking for, readers can either answer one question, or if they choose not to, they can provide their email address, to receive a minimum of one email alert. They are of course left with the third choice of not doing anything at all – but that means no data for them.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, the Texas Tribune’s April Hinkle defends the choice saying that readers “have to give to get”, adding, ”All the information on our site is free, and we thought this would be a good test.”

Despite what may appear to be a somewhat controversial tactic on the surface, the Texas Tribune hasn’t received any complaints. Most readers don’t seem perturbed by the idea of handing over anonymous data of their own in exchange for data they’re looking for.

Publishers are not the only ones who stand to gain from Google’s product. It provides a cost-effective way for researchers to come by the data they need, and for the end-user – you – it seems like a far more appealing alternative to the increasingly common paywalls used by major publishers.

Unlike paywalls, however, according to PaidContent, it doesn’t take much more than using a Chrome extension like AdBlock to bypass the survey. So while the Texas Tribune’s figures certainly do speak of the potential the product has to bring in money, it certainly may need a tweak or two.

 

Prescription for Patch: Become an All-in-One SMB Marketing Solution

See the original post at:

http://streetfightmag.com/2012/04/20/prescription-for-patch-become-an-all-in-one-smb-marketing-solution/

 

 20 APRIL 2012 BY KIRK CARAWAY

Kirk Caraway is a guest author.  

There has been a lot of criticism hurled in recent months at AOL’s hyperlocal news experiment Patch. It seems that some new “dramatic” tidbit is always showing up in the trades about how Patch is failing.

Some of this criticism is deserved. I don’t think the folks at Patch would claim there haven’t been mistakes made. But part of the reason it’s in focus is that the company makes an easy target for those in the news business who are shell-shocked by the changes transforming the industry.

I think there is a lot of value in the network approach to hyperlocal news. Many small startup publishers are challenged by the technical details of web publishing — and by the need to offer the kind of polished, powerful, digital product that online readers have come to expect. Tech and design can suck up huge amounts of time and resources. By centralizing the technical details, Patch achieves an economy of scale, and frees its local editors to concentrate on content.

Putting content aside, though, it seems the big problem for Patch is sales. With only $20 million in reported revenues for 2011 across the 850+ sites, it’s clear that something is missing. This report from Business Insider quoted a Patch sales team member who said that 70 percent of salespeople were not hitting their targets. Another report estimates that the average member of Patch’s 152-person outside sales team is only bringing in $52,022 a year in ad revenue.

Patch’s problem is the same one that affects many other local news operations: in pinning its focus so heavily on display ads, the company isn’t offering local businesses the kind of comprehensive marketing service they really need.

Let’s back up a minute. Before the web, newspapers were the kings of local. If a you had a local business and needed to get the word out, you just called up the newspaper to place an ad. It was that easy. But newspapers don’t have the monopoly they enjoyed in the past. Not only are there many other sources for local news, newspapers also have to battle for readers’ attention against Facebook, YouTube and the entire Internet, as well as 500+ channels of television, Netflix, video games, etc. The days when a local business could successfully market itself to new customers by simply buying an ad in one publication are gone. Yet online news organizations — including Patch — are still by and large using the same old newspaper advertising model.

The mission of any newspaper or other advertising-supported media operation is this: Help your clients communicate. That is what they pay for. In today’s media world, display advertising is just one method of communication. These days social media, public relations, search engines and other online marketing vehicles all play a role as well (in addition to advertising). Those in the local news business might despair at this fragmentation, but they are actually missing a huge opportunity.

If you talk to local business owners about all of these online promotional vehicles, you will find that most of them are confused and frustrated. They know they should be using Facebook and Twitter, or updating their websites, or doing more PR, or sending out email blasts. They are constantly hit up by salespeople promising to put them on the front page of Google, or selling them Yellow Pages listings online, or a hundred of other types of advertising. But they don’t have the time or the knowledge to handle all of these things. Too often they fall for scams, or rely too heavily on one vehicle, only to find that it doesn’t pay off.

Unlike other local start-ups, [Patch] has the resources to build this kind of integrated system, and can use the power of its network to create effective marketing and sales programs to push out to all their sites.

Businesses don’t need more online advertising options. They need a solution. The real opportunity is to offer businesses a service that bundles together as many of these promotional vehicles as possible into a simple, low-cost package that makes it easy for them to communicate with their customers.

The service I envision is one where a business manager can do something as simple as writing an email, and have that message pushed out through multiple channels. He or she can write, “Hey, we’re having a sale today!” and have that message automatically formatted into an advertisement on the news site. In addition, it could also be pushed out to his or her blog, as well as posted to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. In the process, that same message could be emailed out as a press release to all the local news media and/or blasted out to the business’ customer email list.

The next step would be to integrate this message into the news site. Press releases can be automatically imported in the site, and displayed as sponsored blog posts. Those messages that have dates tied to them can be included in the site’s event calendar. Messages could also be marked as coupons or specials, and given different display options, or included into the news site’s email newsletters and social media pages. The service could even create local advertising networks to place these ads on other sites, or allow clients to book and manage ads on Google, Facebook, Bing and others.

If business managers are too busy or not savvy enough to pump out the messages themselves, then a fully managed service could be offered to do it for them. Now, you have something that is worth a lot more than CPM-based banner ads.

There are other services available that try to make it easy for business to update different social networks in one step. But the advantage local news publishers would have with a system like this is the ability to combine their clients’ communications with advertising and content, and present them to a local audience. Just as advertising alone is not the answer, neither is social networking. This is where local news sites like Patch can offer a service that others can’t.

If Patch decided to go this route, the company would be well-positioned to make the service work. Unlike other local start-ups, it has the resources to build this kind of integrated system, and can use the power of its network to create effective marketing and sales programs to push out to all their sites.

But to get there, Patch will have to change its advertising-centric mindset and focus on providing a service with real value to local advertisers. No business can be successful unless what it offers to its target customers is something they need. Solving their clients’ communications needs would go a long way toward patching the hole in AOL’s ship.

Kirk Caraway is founder/publisher of CarsonNow.org, and mother site of the Nowtown Network that includes SouthTahoeNow.com. He grew up in the newspaper business, and is an award-winning writer and editor. He started building and managing local news websites in 1994, and has witnessed firsthand the evolution of local online news. He can be contacted atkc@carsonnow.org.

 

Study: 40% of SMB Sites Lack Phone Numbers

Read the original post at: http://www.screenwerk.com/2012/04/16/study-40-of-smb-sites-have-no-phone-number/

By Greg Sterling

Implied Intelligence is a company that generates and enhances local databases. I spoke to founder Marc Brombert several weeks ago about the company’s services and capabilities. As an illustration he offered to perform a number of tests. I suggested a comparison of the accuracy of local search sites.

Implied Intelligence completed that study and sent me the results a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up the methodology and results of that test at Search Engine Land. Here’s a brief recap . . .

Using a data set of 1,000 local businesses (with websites) in the US, Implied Intelligence compared a number of leading local search sites along several criteria:

• Coverage (was the listing present)
• Number of duplicates
• Accuracy of information
• Richness of information (presence of additional information beyond business name, address and phone)

The results were a surprise: Superpages and YP.com beat Google Maps for overall accuracy and completeness. However, reviews were not part of the content comparison. Here’s the final, overall ranking:

As a separate exercise, Implied Intelligence looked at more than 8 million local/SMB websites in March of this year and found that most had relatively little content. Indeed, 40% didn’t feature a phone number and half didn’t have an email address:

–One page websites: 22.4%

–Websites with email addresses: 49.6%

–Websites with e-mails from same domain: 30.5%

–Websites with e-mails on first page: 23.8%

–Websites with phone numbers: 60.4%

–Websites with local phone numbers: 49.3%

–Websites with phone number on first page: 32.4%

–Websites with local phone number on first page: 24.8%

More than 15 years after the mainstreaming of the Internet most SMB websites are still weak and thin. These businesses are under-utilizing their sites and undermining themselves by failing to give customers multiple obvious ways to contact them.

 

About Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is the founder of Sterling Market Intelligence, focused on the Internet’s impact on offline consumer behavior. He is senior analyst for Internet2Go, an advisory service from Opus Research tracking the evolution of the mobile Internet. Sterling is also a contributing editor for  Search Engine Land, the leading online publication about the search marketplace.

Until he left in 2006, Sterling ran BIA/Kelsey’s Interactive Local Media program. Before ILM he was a producer at TechTV. Prior to TechTV, Sterling was part of the pre-launch editorial team at AllBusiness.com. And way back in the 1990s, Sterling was a practicing attorney — before leaving law to join the manic world of online marketing.

He is frequently cited and quoted in leading US publications regarding the search, local and mobile markets.

Follow Greg     Connect with Greg on LinkedIn.

Cratering Search & Display Sectors Drove U.S. Ad Market Into Decline in Q4

Read the original post at: http://paidcontent.org/2012/03/13/419-cratering-search-display-sectors-drove-u-s-ad-market-into-decline-in-q/

By Daniel Frankel 

  

Driven down by big fourth-quarter declines in digital advertising, the total U.S. ad market grew only 0.8 percent for all of 2011, a report released Monday by research firm Kantar Media said.

According to Kantar, which is owned by global ad-agency conglomerate WPP, the fourth quarter of 2011 was the worst three-month period for U.S. advertising growth in two years. In fact, since growing 8.7 percent in the third quarter of 2010, ad revenue growth has decreased every month since, actually declining in the fourth quarter by 1 percent (see chart).

With traditional sectors like broadcast TV up 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter and cable up 2.4 percent, digital sectors were singled out by Kantar for stymieing growth of the overall market. Paid search, for example, fell 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter, and 2.8 percent for all of 2011, with financial, insurance and local service providers investing fewer dollars.

Meanwhile, internet display advertising decreased 5.9 percent in Q4, dragged down by smaller budgets from auto manufacturers, telecom providers and travel companies. For the entire year, display increased 5.5 percent.

Kantar attributes the decline in digital revenues to the migration of dollars into less mature markets like mobile.

“Some mature digital media formats were touched by the year-end tide of reduced spending. Whether this is an isolated occurrence or an early sign of digital dollars moving more quickly towards emerging and unmeasured digital platforms bears watching as 2012 unfolds,” said Jon Swallen, senior VP of research for Kantar Media Intelligence North America.

 

Mobile and the news media's imploding business model

Read the original post at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/27/mobile-news-media-imploding

Smartphones will soon be the primary news source for most Americans. That's if anyone can still make money by reporting. 

Michael Wolff

 guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 March 2012 16.00 EDT

Get it while stocks last: the Guardian Android app. Photograph: Guardian

Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years.

Makes sense: just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that traveled with you, so should mobile.

But it is also a depressing development, portending, once again, the end of the world as we know it: the news business has been plunged into a crisis because web advertising dollars are a fraction of old media money. And mobile is now a fraction of web: the approximate conversion rate is $100 offline = $10 on the web = $1 in mobile.

In part, the reasons are purely mechanical: you can cram three or four ads on a web page, meaning an average web CPM (cost per thousand views) of $1.00 (if you're lucky) can become a rate-per-page per thousand (RPM) of $4.00 (versus $20-$40 CPMs in traditional media). Mobile CPMs are running at something closer to $0.25 – and we're only able to fit one ad on those miniature pages.

And to some extent, the problem defines the medium: who wants to pay for inattention and a cursory scrawl? (How much of mobile news is consumed by people behind the wheel, even?)

And yet, this resistance, or lack of interest, on the part of advertisers challenges the bedrock logic of marketing: follow your customers.

Brands and big agencies continue to announce their commitment to and excitement about the revolution at hand. They surely want to be seen as players and cool people. I don't know anybody in consumer marketing who isn't gaga about digital and mobile. But these are the same people and big brands who have doubled down on television, your dad's medium, making 2011 a golden TV advertising year.

Now, there's an optimistic and stubborn view that this must change, that agencies and brands can't hold on to the past for ever. Almost every digital executive and booster will, at this point in the conversation, outline his or her children's media consumption habits as anecdotal evidence in support of the coming digital ad boom. But, as it happens, the patterns seem to get only worse. According to a recent report by Kanter Media, broadcast TV was up was 7.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011 (up 2.4% for the year), while internet search advertising was down 6.4% (down 2.8% for the year); and internet display advertising was down 5.9% in the fourth quarter (and down 5.5% for the year). Mobile does not even get its own break-out category.

There is another bleak element here: a basic shift in how advertising is bought and sold. More and more digital space, both web and mobile, is moved through a real-time auction process: audiences (or demographic segments) are sold like soy beans. Curiously, for all other commodities, the auction process raises prices. In a virtually unlimited world of digital advertising space, it lowers them.

If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world.

Hence the new consensus about the pay wall – on the web, but even more optimistically on anything handheld. In a very short time, the industry consensus has moved from "it will never work" to "it's inevitable". It doesn't seem to matter that this has happened without any evidence that it can work, other than on the most incremental basis. It does seem to be, however, the only alternative – or roach-like adaptation, no matter how meager and clawing in the dirt – to ad-based oblivion for large news organizations. (And even so, they surely won't be large anymore if they are to be supported on a paid-for basis.)

And then, there is the share-based news economy. In this new model, news is essentially voted for – that is, it achieves its views and its values by being passed along in the social quick-stream. This model, at a $0.25 CPM, depends on mass appreciation – on numbers so large that it makes television news look like a targeted audience. All of the sins of ratings-driven television news are, accordingly, algebraically magnified. Shared news is, more often than not, insipid happy news (qv Facebook).

Finally, there is "disintermediated" news. This model assumes that roaches, in the form of individual obsessives and low-paid scriveners (a monkey-with-a-typewriter model), continue to produce the ever-rising content pool, which is then parsed and selected, not by editors and reporters, but by your self-selected peer group – through tools supplied by easy-to-use mobile and web-based platforms (qv Twitter).

The bleak or non-existent future for news professionals in a mobile-dominated world is further compounded by our remoteness from, and antipathy to, the thing that has always fed us: advertising. The news business began and thrived on the basis of an historic, if anomalous partnership between the immediate and the commercial. Freedom of the press had as much to do with department stores as with the constitution.

We continue to need some genius – or greedy so-and-so – to figure out how to make a connection between news and moving the merchandise. Or we are lost.

 

Frugality is the New Black?

Originally posted here:  http://promotionalcodes.net/pages/frugality/

Frugality is the New Black

Quick cost-cutters like couponing, buying generic and repurposing are more popular among American families today than they have been in decades. For instance, last year, Americans redeemed an unbelievable $3.7 billion in coupons. That’s $300 million more redeemed savings than they earned in 2009 when the economy was still reeling from recession.

It’s no surprise that U.S. consumers tightened budgets on more than just luxuries during the downturn. Beyond foregoing vacations and remodels, Americans also reduced budgets for gas and groceries to make ends meet. What is surprising is how these habits have only increased despite the steady return of the economy and consumer’s faith in its growth. Hopefully, these smarter spending trends signal more than just a frugal fad. In the meantime, families can continue to enjoy couponing up to 25% off their monthly grocery purchases and finding alternatives to blowing transportation budgets at the pump.

Economists often consider drops in spending on necessities like food and gas as an indicator of consumer cynicism over the health and prospects of an economy, but vibrant frugality-minded online communities say otherwise. Borrowing half as much and quadrupling savings rates, the average American consumer is building a post-recession portfolio that puts their family’s security first.

Check out our infographic visualizing the encouraging frugality trends that have endured the recession:

 

 

Source: Promotional Codes

Pew: News Organizations Struggle With Digital Dollars

Read the original post at Broadcasting & Cable here:

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/480428-Pew_News_Organizations_Struggle_With_Digital_Dollars.php

New study finds that news outlets are not attracting the largest advertisers from their traditional TV and print platforms to their websites

George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/13/2012 12:01:00 AM

After more than 15 years of heavy investments in their online efforts, news organizations are still having a hard time getting the big advertisers on their traditional broadcast, cable TV and print platforms to place online ads on their main websites, according a major study of online advertising at 22 major news organizations by The Project for Excellence in Journalism at the Pew Research Center.

The study focuses on a key issue for traditional news organizations: How can they fund more of their newsgathering operations from the rapidly growing online and digital advertising sector? The question is a critical issue for the future of newspapers and magazines seeing a slump in print advertising and circulation figures. But it is also an important one for TV news organizations who face rapidly mounting costs from their digital efforts at a time when they face increased competition from online news sources.

So far the answers to that question are discouraging, the study found.

While news organizations have worked hard to persuade their print and TV advertiser "to buy space across multiple platforms, there is little evidence that they had succeeded" because "the kinds of products and service being advertised online were quite different than in legacy platforms," the study found.

Worse, the study found that "in-house ads, ads selling or promoting a news organization's own products, fill more space across these news websites than another advertising category," making up 21% of all ads captured during the study, Pew found.

The study also argued that news organizations are doing a relatively poor job of attracting the fastest growing types of online advertising.

For example, the 22 news web sites tended to rely heavily on static banner ads, rather than rich media or video ads, which EMarketer expects to grow by 43% in 2012. In contrast, the banner ads widely seen on news sites will increase by about 18%.

The study also found that very few news organizations were offering targeted ads based on consumer behavior, another increasingly lucrative online practice. "Just three of the 22-CNN, the New York Times and Yahoo News-employed high levels of targeting, delivering different ads to the researchers based on that person's recent online activity," wrote the authors of "Digital Advertising and News: Who advertises on news sites and how much those ads are targeted."

Overall the study found that the top advertising categories online were in-house ads (21%), followed by financial (18%), toiletries/cosmetics (5%), leisure time/activities (5%), corporations (5%) and job search (5%).

The breakdown is based on the volume of ads, not the money they may have produced.

In-house ads were most prevalent on the websites of magazines, accounting for half of all ads, followed by newspapers, where they accounted for 21%. In-house ads were less prevalent on the websites of TV news organizations, with Foxnews.com carrying the most at 12%.

Financial services were heavy advertisers on some TV sites, accounting for 45% of the ads on ABC.com, 30% on CNN.com, 25% at MSNBC.com and 21% at Foxnews.com. CBSnews.com slightly under-indexed with 15%, compared to the 18% average for all 22 sites. 

The study also found significant differences between the prevalence of different types of advertising on cable TV news channels and their web sites. While financial services was the biggest category for cable news online sites, it was the 5^th largest category on cable TV news channels in terms of the volume of ads. In contrast, movies, which were the largest cable TV news category, were relatively rate online.

In terms of network TV news, prescription drug ads accounted for 16% of the ads on network morning and evening news, but "they were just half that on the web," the study concluded.

Online the network TV news sites also relied heavily on financial ads, which made up 31% of their total analyzed, while those ads accounted for only 4.3% of ads on the network TV shows.

Overall, video ads were also relatively rare. "They were most common on cable news websites but they still made up only 2.5% of the ads," the authors noted. "Video ads made up even less on network TV sites, 1.2% at CBSnews.com and less than 1% at ABCnews.com."

Overall the study analyzed 5,381 ads on the main websites and legacy outlets of 22 different news organizations. The initial phase covered ads in various days between June 28 and July 1, 2011. The researchers also followed up with various sites on their targeting efforts on Jan. 27, 2012.

 

ROI, or the art of counting monsters -

Originally posted on BlockbyBlock. Read the original post here: 

 http://www.blockbyblock.us/2012/01/09/roi-or-the-art-of-counting-monsters/#

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Sally Duros

 

 

Next time you’re puzzling over the return on investment, ROI, of advertising for a neighborhood business, first consider the monsters.

“If you look at Facebook as the little monster in the corner you have to feed every day.  And Twitter is another one. And the business’ website is another one. And email is another one,” says Greg Swanson, CEO of Itz Publishing,  a strategic consulting partner for online media, “the neighborhood business  now has 15 monsters in the room.”

“The question is not what is the ROI on each one, it is how the heck do I feed 15 monsters?!”, he says.

A history lesson on small business marketing will clarify why this is relevant to advertising.

In 1990, if you were a small business looking to win customers in your local market, you spent 70% of your total marketing budget buying ads with legacy media — radio, TV and  newspapers. That means you spent the bulk of your money —  $7 out of $10 —  buying the audience from someone else who had one  – i.e. buying ads on radio, TV or in newspapers.

“You were basically renting an audience,“ Swanson says.

The small business spent the other 30% of its marketing budget reaching the audience it had built itself. It used marketing tools that included signage, posters, direct mail, discounts and a few other bells and whistles.

But now it’s 2012, and those numbers have reversed, Sawnson says. Today small businesses are spending only 30% of their total marketing dollars buying ads with a publisher, i.e. renting an audience —   including your website audience. And they are spending 70% of their dollars reaching the audience that they have built themselves.

“70-30. Which means that all media companies — whether you are talking about indy online media or legacy media — are fighting over an ever-shrinking part of the pie,” Swanson says.

The advertising/rental pie is very small.

This has been a 30-to-40 year movement on the part of small business owners, Swanson says.

That’s why Swanson thinks it’s time for local media to find a way to participate with small business owners and help them focus their 70% of self-built marketing dollars.

Today, the flavor-of-the-day for much of that self-built audience includes Facebook, websites, Yelp, Twitter, Groupon and other social sites that small businesses are compelled to participate in.

Using each of these tools poses a slew of questions. For instance, if  a small business works with Groupon, it has bought 1,500 new email addresses. It’s got a new audience to market to as well as a lot of questions. How often should I talk with my audience? What should I say?

In addition, every tool is measured by a different metric, Swanson says.  Social sites count likes, and clicks and views and opens and none of them compare well with each other. Social media marketing consultant Brian Solis has written extensively about this problem and has developed a rough system of measurement.

“The small business owner doesn’t have a clue how to manage this,” Swanson says. “A company like AT&T has highly sophisticated tools for managing social, but if you are the local advertiser, you are blindfolded in a dark room with a dart in your hand throwing it against the wall hoping the dart board is on the wall.”

In short, the small business owner faces more things to do with no greater budget, expertise or time.

That’s why to Swanson’s way of thinking, for the local indy publisher the sweet spot might be to ease the pain for the small business rather than trying to sell on a traditional ROI model.

The indy publisher could say “Let us provide you with a service where you can enter your information once and we will distribute it. And one of the distribution streams will be an ad on our news site.”

And so the ROI quickly morphs.

Though an unproven and controversial idea, Allen D. Mutter, who writes Newsasaur came out in support of the idea of publishers serving as social media managment boutiques in December, citing Forrester Rsearch.

 A recent survey by Forrester Research, the market research company, found that 77% of the mangers of small and medium businesses are concerned about building their social-marketing presence. But nearly all of them say they are so bewildered about what to do and so overwhelmed with the ordinary chores of running their businesses that they want someone to help.

Swanson says that online publishers have an added quandary in that they often choose to sell banner ads – which are outmoded as an advertising model — coupled with selling to a news organization’s demographics. In Swanson’s opinion, neither takes advantage of the true capacity of the Internet to match buyers and sellers, but that’s another tributary we won’t go down just yet.

So as to ROI, how does this add up?

If you are a local publisher trying to sell ads to small business, and this small business conundrum jibes with your experience, you might try to understand the small business marketing mix of “rental” vs. self-build and see how you can work with the business to help maximize its channels, with your news site serving as an included channel.

Some might find following the small business money and easing the pain a more fruitful route than the more traditional path.

Let us know what your experience has been.

Cox Media Group Plants $6 Million In Content Farm Skyword

This is interesting. A fairly uncommon investment in content. Most media companies are making investments in marketing tools, or networks, or mobile platforms, not content creation.

Read the original post at

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-cox-media-group-plants-6-million-in-content-farm-skyword/

 

Here is the post...

 

Broadcasting, publishing and marketing group Cox Media Group is putting down some more roots in digital media investments: it has announced an investment of $6 million in Skyword, a content farm, to expand Skyword’s business.

Cox is the sole investor in the company.

It looks like the investment for Cox, which owns 15 TV and 85 radio affiliate stations in some 22 markets across the U.S., is a strategic one, as it looks to develop more interactive and rich content for its advertisers, particularly on digital platforms as advertising in more traditional media formats like those it operators continues to be face declines as newer forms of media take away the attention of viewers and advertisers. The company reported $1.8 billion in revenue last year.

An as-yet unnamed Cox executive will also join Skyword’s board of directors.

Skyword says it already produces thousands of pieces of content for a “search and social driven world,” which it generates and distributes through its own platform. Cox’s affiliates could potentially become alternative sources for distribution for those pieces of content.

Content farms like Skyword and its bigger competitor Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) have been accused of producing low-grade content for the lowest bidder—a charge they are trying to work off as they grow in prominence as businesses.

 

Report: Newspapers Need to Diversify

From Biz Report http://www.bizreport.com/2011/01/report-newspapers-need-to-diversify.html#

Newspapers need to diversify

 

More hope for the flagging newspaper industry may be around the corner. A new report from the American Press Institute and ITZBelden indicates that newspapers that diversify a bit may snag more local businesses. This, of course, doesn't bring in consumers, but consumers it turns out are already returning to the newspaper fold. They are simply engaging in different ways.

by Kristina Knight

In addition to the tablet trend, which has seen many consumers plug back in to newspaper and magazine content, it seems that there might be hope for the flailing print publication industry. eMarketer experts suggest that 70 million tablet computers will be sold in the US this year and a Pew Research Report shows that more consumers received news headlines via mobile devices than traditional outlets in mid-2010.

The API/ITZBelden report indicates that media companies - newspapers, magazines, etc. - offering a broad range of services - online, print, etc. - serve the needs of local businesses better. Local businesses, according to the report, are looking for a kind of ad-agency-approach, which newspapers can offer by giving more choices to the local advertiser.

The key is in understanding where each local business will get the biggest advertising benefit.

"There are big differences in the way different categories of businesses explore new advertising channels. For example, while automotive dealers are aggressively exploring social media, health care providers are much less likely to have a social media strategy," was written in the report.

So, local publishing hubs offering more than print ads are positioned to expand even though local print readership may not expand. Offering mobile, social media, search marketing and locally-targeted ads are just a few of the ways publishers can give local businesses more bang for their ad buck, if the publishers are willing to change their offerings a bit in the process.