FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

Media buyers who buy the products publishers sell now divide the media they manage into three categories:

• Earned media, largely social media where organizations "earn" exposure by posting content on services like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

• Owned media, media a marketer owns like their company website, newsletter, or blog.

• Paid media, third party media, which is most of what publishers sell to marketers.

But consider the emotional message these labels send.

"Owning" your own media makes marketers fee More...

If your sales staff sells traditional media, understanding how paid search works is a big plus. Today, about half of all online ad dollars go to search, so it is important to understand where most of online money now goes.

The first step is for media reps is to ask clients how much of their ad budget goes to search. Many are surprised at how much of the marketing plan goes to a format that started in its current form only 12 years ago—2000 was the year Google first started selling advertising based on keywords.

The year search really broke out was 2008. In that year Google indexed a trillion web pages, but more importantly, More...

Angie Hicks Bowman, co-founder of the home service rating company that carries her name, is one of the smartest marketers I have ever interviewed. She started her company as "Columbus Neighbors," personally going door to door in Columbus, Ohio to sign up members and collect ratings on local contractors. After her first year of door knocking, her company had 1,000 members. Today, that number is over 1.5 million paid members.

When my wife Lynn became an Angie’s List member, a monthly print magazine started showing up at our Brooklyn brownstone. I was intrigued. In a time when many marketers a More...

Many media reps who sell both print and on-line media lead their client conversations talking about print. Since it can take as much time to sell a $7,000 print ad as a $1,000 banner ad, this can look like the fastest way to meet quota...or is it?

I have found the opposite is true. Starting with print can lead to lower print sales. Sound crazy? Here are three reasons why:

1. Advertisers would rather talk about digital options than talk about print. Digital media is new and more interesting for them. Honestly, what is there to say that is new and exciting about print advertising that can compare?

2. When calling on smaller and mid-sized accounts there is a very real opportunity to be a More...

This post originally appeared on Josh Gordon's Ad Sales Blog. 

If you follow the traditional publishing business model in an ever more digital world, it is inevitable. The traditional magazine business model is based on creating content to attract eyeballs, and then to sell exposure (advertising) to them. This basic plan has kept magazine publishers profitable for over a hundred years. But this model faces harsh challenges in today's digital media world. The problem is a far more efficient way to deliver eyeballs online, called "search." Every marketer knows that they can get far more eyeballs and clicks per More...

A study released earlier this year advocates sponsorships over advertising as the best way to monetize podcasts. The Association for Downloadable Media along with Edison Research report that podcast listeners HATE radio style ads but relate much better to "this content is brought to you by" sponsorships. The study says that it helps if the podcast host makes the sponsorship announcement.

When podcast listeners were asked about traditional radio style ads their response was negative with 62% saying they "generally dislike" them.

But when the same audience was asked about sponsorship plugs instead 67% responded they "Don't mind them and occasionally find them useful." Sponsorships seem the way to g More...

At the just concluded FOLIO: Show, Kerry Smith, Red 7 Media CEO, offered a surprising view of what the future of print publishing might be. Challenged, like all publishing companies, with the decline of print ad revenue, Smith has diversified his organization's offerings to include marketing services such as research, and consulting. But even as less of his company's revenue is tied to print he is more committed to it. Why? Because he has found that his magazines are most often the first point of contact leading to the sale of all the other services he is now selling.

Today, publishers of all kinds are using the presence they have in their markets to start related businesses. For example:

• Premier Guitar, sel More...

Many print publishing companies are failing  in their transition to digital by giving the wrong answer to the question, "What business are you in?"

In Theodore Levitt's classic marketing essay, "Marketing Myopia" he describes how the once mighty railroads went bankrupt by failing to understand they were in the transportation business, not the railroad business. Many publishers are making the same mistake, thinking they are in the content delivery business when they are actually now in the customer engagement business More...

Magazine editors still suffer from a sense of entitlement. Most grew up in a world where if you created articles that were well-written, relevant, and targeted for their audience it would automatically attract an audience...and advertisers. But the many new ways readers get content, by the time a magazine arrives to compete for a reader's attention, a lot of content needs have been satisfied. Magazines edited with an "If you build it they will come" mentality are now in danger.

But despite the more efficient online and mobile ways to get content to readers there are still some types of content that is better delivered in print. As we move into a Web centric world these are forms of editorial print publications should co More...

By June of this year we will be having a very different discussion about interactive magazines. By then, the behind the scenes work going on in several areas will come together enabling the printed magazine to evolve into its inevitable digital form. Soon content publishers, content distribution companies, and hardware technology companies, working on different pieces of the puzzle, will have their pieces on the table. Once connected, a new way to look at magazine content and how it is delivered will emerge and the skeptics of digital magazines will need to reconsider their views.

The activity is everywhere:

â–  Apple is quietly working behind the s More...

A publisher client of mine lost a large media sale when a CMO said, "I have a huge social media presence and post as much content as you do. Why advertise with you?" How do you respond when social media tools enable all your advertisers to become online publishers themselves?  

What publishers do (and always have done) that business cannot do for themselves (even in the age of social media) is to offer content as a third party. Chances are, your client’s content, no matter how great the volume, comes from their point of view. It will about their products, their customers, and told from their perspective. Their competition li More...

A recent issue of Media Life laid out a compelling case making the current enthusiasm for social media sound a lot like the "irrational exuberance" leading up to the dot com bubble crash of 2001.

Consider:

"The fact is, it's a good bet these social networking sites will never figure out
a workable business model because there may not be one. On the
internet, it's accepted faith that if you build traffic, revenue will
follow, typically from advertising.

But it simply may not apply to social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

That's for a reason that makes perfect sense on the face of it. Social networking
sites are about people communicating More...