Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users
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Tag Archives: advertising
News sites as “Angry fruit salad on meth”
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Don’t let your drive for advertising dollars undercut your purpose:
I made the mistake of going to a website today. It’s understandable, of course — everybody does it, from time to time — and I’m sure I’ll forgive myself, eventually.
I don’t mean just any website, of course, I mean a publication. A place where a business publishes interesting things that I like to read.
I couldn’t hit the Reader button in Safari fast enough. In fact, I couldn’t hit it at all, so stunned was I by the flickering colorful circus the page presented. It was like angry fruit salad on meth.
Brent Simmons – The Pummeling Pages.
Double-dipping
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Maybe these different standards are because the contexts are so different: magazines, newspapers, and TV all feel cheap, since they’ve shat on consumers to make a few more cents for decades, but the iPad or a well-designed website are clean, high quality, and customer-centric.
Or maybe it’s just me. I just don’t feel comfortable paying for an iPad or web publication, no matter how good it is, and then having ads shoved down my throat. It makes me feel ripped off: what did I pay for?
Marco Arment – Double-dipping.
Just a myth
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The key word, I think, is spiritual. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can’t find on our own… or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own spirituality on.
People use a Dell. They are an Apple.
Seth Godin – Just a myth.
Why Google cares if you use your real name
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There’s a very simple business reason why Google cares if they have your real name. It means it’s possible to cross-relate your account with your buying behavior with their partners, who might be banks, retailers, supermarkets, hospitals, airlines. To connect with your use of cell phones that might be running their mobile operating system. To provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the Internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.
Simply put, a real name is worth more than a fake one.
Dave Winer – Why Google cares if you use your real name.
Failing at a business model for news
There was hubbub a couple of days ago when Zite, the new personalized magazine app for iPads, was sent a cease and desist letter by a who’s who of media companies.
Techdirt published a strongly worded condemnation, including this gem:
And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you’re doing business wrong.[ref]via @ryanpitts[/ref]
Part of the problem for the media companies was that Zite was making content readable removing ads and, thus, cutting off a revenue stream for the content producers.
It’s too bad media companies viewed this as a reason to send a cease and desist letter. Instead they could have read it for what it was: a statement that people hate the ads on news sites. It could have given media some data for improving advertising. Oh well, opportunity lost.
News advertising should take a hint from software developers. Include ads that your users want enabled and will miss when they are gone.
Don’t think that possible? Check out the response when Tweetie/Twitter for Mac dropped Fusion ads last year.
Twitter and its plan to run advertising
I wanted to jot down two quick thoughts about Twitter’s announcement earlier today.
First, the money for Twitter is not going to be in running ads against search terms. I just do not think most people use Twitter as a way to consistently search for information. Google can get away with this because a search engine is not traditionally a personal thing. Google leverages the power of the many, Twitter relies upon relationships between users.
Twitter’s true value in advertising, is going to lie in leveraging what it knows about users you follow. If Hunch is able to build something that predicts tastes based upon following habits Twitter ought to able to develop something similar to deliver targeted recommendations.
This last part is what has me actually excited about advertising on Twitter. This could be huge. It could take the type of recommendation-engine that is true of advertising on The Deck and Fusion Ads and extrapolate it to a service with millions of users.
MTV and video ad formats
Just got around to watching this. It’s a good discussion of trying to build an online video experience that is best for both the user and the advertiser. For a little more information on the study check out the full article.
The arrogance of Rupert Murdoch
A reader of Andrew Sullivan’s writes:
How did [Howard Stern] go from a must-hear personality who was constantly in the news for his antics or his outrageousness to a “whatever happened to?” has been? Simply, he was put behind a pay wall. Oprah has her own channel, but I’ve never heard it mentioned. If the King of All Media and a woman who has enough influence to swing a national election can’t get people to pay, why on earth does Murdoch think he can?
A good point for sure.
Gruber on Charging for Access to News Sites
John Gruber on why news organizations continue to try and force pay walls to work:
And it’s not really surprising that they’re failing to evolve. The decision-makers — the executives sitting atop large non-editorial management bureaucracies — are exactly the people who need to go if newspapers are going to remain profitable.
Upton Sinclair’s adage comes to mind: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
A good point and one that probably rings true in more industries than just news. Vertical hierarchies no longer make sound business strategies.
