FOLIO: Personalities -- The Blog People Page

As media moves from being intangible to measured the details become more important, and lunch--the core tool of intangible sales-- less so. Along these lines, Ed Kelly executive vice president, digital media at KSL Media, offered sobering advice in a post last week on "Online Publishing Insider":

"We're not in the lunch business. We're in the advertising business. The publishers that heed this charge will outrun their competitors every time, even if their sites aren't quite as robust."

Kelly offers these guidelines for reps wanting to make the most of the new sales environment:

Respond to the full RFP. This sounds a lot easi More...

Digital magazines have all of the advantages of print magazines except they are online. Right?

In addition, readers have instant random access to content. Everyone wins. Right?

Wrong. Advertisers can lose. If a reader takes a random access skip over their ad, that ad is not seen.

Although digital magazines may look more like a print magazine than a Web site, the random access issue asks us to sell ads more like website advertising.

You will do better to sell positions in a digital magazine that offer adjacency to content that a reader may take a "random access" skip to visit. It is helpfu More...

Do the ad programs you propose promote More...

In a recent test on its own newsletters, MarketingSherpa wanted to know which two- or three-word phrase could get subscribers to click through to another article. Here's what they measured:

• "Click to continue": 8.53% clickthrough rate
• "Continue to article": 3.3% clickthrough rate
• "Read more": (-)1.8% clickthrough rate

MarketingSherpa shared, "With these results, we had a strong feeling that the front-runner, 'Click to continue,' would win in the A/B test, and it did, producing 3.5% more clicks than 'Continue to article.' Needless to say, we immediately switched the words in our link in all of our newsletters."

Over at Media Life, Rachel, the chatty career advice columnist, gives her best advice for migrating to new media to those "Stuck in Traditional Media."

It seems that for people on the selling side, migrating to new media is less stressful. No need to change jobs as for we sellers the media comes to us! Most often it is just handed to us to be integrated into our product mix.

But when you read Rachel's column it is clear that some view interactive media buying as a fundamentally different skill set from buying traditional media:

"'Some interactive agencies will value y More...

So it is with media. An October released study from The Nielsen Company revealed that, worldwide, the most trusted media is also the one most losing ground with advertisers, newspapers.

The two least trusted media are the ones with blue sky ad sales predictions, online banner ads, and ads on mobile phones. According to the study:

"...while new platforms like the Internet are beginning to catch up with older media in terms of ad revenues, traditional advertising channels continue to retain the public's trust. Ads in newspapers rank second worldwide among all media categories, at 63 percent overall, while television, magazines and radio each ranked above 50 percent."

The study also contains fun information on wh More...

In 2005, search guru John Battelle was credited with sound bite critique of digital magazines describing them as "fish with feet," merely a transitional product for the digitally challenged who need extra help migrating from paper to the Web.

If Battelle was right, digital magazines should be fading away and gone in a few years. Also, his concern about the long term could become an objection raised by clients blocking your next digital magazine media sale.

While digital magazines have detractors they are now enjoying huge growth:

Digital publisher NXTbook Media reported< More...

Earlier this year, MediaPost subscribers-which include media buyers and sellers-were surveyed by Dynamic Logic and asked if there were buzzwords they would like to have people stop using. About half (49.5%) said yes.

Top of their "stop using" list? "Web 2.0" and "engagement."

On a call, it's a good idea to check the buzzwords at the door. The problem with words like these, is they mean different things to different people, so using them often does not advance communication.

Download: PDF of the survey

Read more here ... More...

In the late '80s while managing the sales and marketing of CableVision magazine I saw magazine myopia at its worst. As I watched, first hand, the rapid growth of many new cable networks I wondered how the opportunities they represented had slipped by my publishing peers:

Why didn't someone at Sports Illustrated start ESPN?
Why didn't someone at Time or Newsweek start CNN?
Why didn't someone at Rolling Stone start MTV?
Why didn't someone at National Geographic start the Discovery Channel?

The list could go on...but I fear history could be repeating itself, this time with regional magazines.

Read more More...

The Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) just released a U.K.-based study that tests advertising on different media for their ability to drive traffic to search engines. Of the all the media tested, television was the top driver beating out magazines by a nose.

But in the second part of the study magazines pulled off an upset. Of the people who were both driven to search AND made a purchase, magazines beat TV. While magazines may not generate the big bang that television does, it has greater influence for people driven to search who are purchase oriented.

Use it on a call. This study sets up a great story: Magazines may be secon More...