FOLIO: Section Blogs by Sales and Marketing

Not ‘Giving an Inch’: Some Initial Results

Jason Fell — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:13:46 -0500

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about “not giving an inch,” in terms of selling print to my customers. My friend Tony Silber, among others privately, took issue with this [“The Last Samurai”] and questioned whether I was losing my mind or was becoming some sort of anachronism.

The jury may still be out on that, but I am going to expand on my reasoning and share the results of our efforts to “not give an inch,” this Fall at my company.

My proposition was that, as an industry, we have a responsibility to sell the benefits of print as a medium as opposed to the old days of just selling against competitive titles. As much of the industry seems to be afraid of this, I think there is also an opportunity here to take significant market share.
Awareness, interest, engagement—none of this has gone away. I don’t hear arguments that awareness building is better done on the Internet than in print in trade markets. The unique benefits of print have not changed—but they are not trumpeted.

Trade magazine readership is shrinking. Fewer people read magazines, and the time spent with them is less. Many people do not read any magazines or newspapers at all. But trade magazines never reached the entire market—in fact, rarely have they ever reached more than 10 percent. So that hasn’t changed. The remaining publications need to be more relevant, more engaging, more targeted at a reading audience like middle managers who don’t necessarily know what solutions they are looking for.

There will still be print advertisers. There will be surviving trade magazines. By not giving an inch, you may become one of those survivors, and there are benefits to this:

1. By being the only game in town you can reduce your costs appropriately to be in line with what is now expected for print advertising

2. By being the print survivor you probably have a stronger, more active and committed database to promote webinars and lead generation programs to.

3. As readers and advertisers scan the field, they see only us. We become a must-buy element simply by having survived.

4. Know that competitors will continue to shut down, leaving more opportunity—IF you sell print aggressively (“yes, Mr. Advertiser, they went out of business, but here’s why they did and why we are still relevant—in fact MORE relevant than before…”)

So these were the benefits we had in mind at our company, as we continued to sell print aggressively during the Fall, when we are selling the print contracts for the next year. The results are in and our print contract sales are up 32.6 percent over last year. Not bad for a recession. Some titles went out of business and we took market share from our remaining competitors (their January issues are down from last year). We convinced the remaining print advertisers that we were going to be the survivor and that there were still unique benefits from print advertising.

It’s not easy to zig while others zag. And to be sure, we’re zagging and selling our online offerings hard, too. But by not giving an inch on print, I think we made out pretty well.

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Advertorials Give New Life to Print

Jason Fell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:30:19 -0500

Advertorials—the original "paid content"—are no stranger to magazines (FOLIO: does it too. See an example here.) Marketing that looks like content is always attractive to advertisers and as publishers agonize over plummeting print revenue and clients starting to do their own branded Webinars/events/lead gen, advertorials are a way to lure them back and maybe even hit budget for the first time this year.

Reader’s Digest’s Taste of Home recently said it will produce custom editorial columns that are more "synergistic" with advertisers’ promotional goals. Taste of Home created custom in-book sections that feature branded recipe cards for client Jimmy Dean that run next to the magazine’s own recipe cards section. According to RDA’s Taste of Home and Home & Garden Media Group vp and publisher Lora Gier, these sections are clearly marked as advertising and all advertroasial sections are "new pages" that don’t take away from existing editorial pages.

"The conversations we have are very strategic versus just discussing demographics and rates," Gier told FOLIO:. "We are winning exclusive business through these partnerships."

Advertorials Without the "Advertising" Tag

However, other publishers are pushing the boundaries of advertorials. A recent RIA Biz article gave a comprehensive look at a new advertorial program from Worth magazine, which was acquired by Sandow Media in 2008.

Worth charges financial advisors $2,495 per month or about $30,000 per year (the minimum commitment) to receive two-page profiles in six issues, free reprints, magazine subscriptions worth up to $11,000 for the advisor’s clients and a hard cover book with advisor profiles.

The article quotes Worth publisher Patrick Williams as saying, "Fifty-one million of assets under management just for the first issue. People say print media is dead but I have $51 million that says they are wrong." [It’s funny how marketers' complaints about print seem to disappear when they get to control the message.]

However, Worth isn’t labeling profiles as "advertising" but includes a sentence in the preamble of the profile section indicating they are paid for.

I’m all for vendor content and realize publishers (and editors) need to work more closely with advertisers but I don’t agree with advertorials that are anything less than clearly marked.

In 2006, FOLIO: did a cover story on the rise of Schofield Media Group, a publisher which at the time had grown to 10 magazines in the U.K., 14 in the U.S. and $40 million in revenue, thanks to a model that includes selling editorial case studies.

At the time, then Penton Media group publisher Terri Mollison said of Schofield's model, "How can any market derive what key trends or 'hot companies’ are worth reading about when the only criteria to select those companies is which vendors and distributors who are willing to pony up money to have accolades written about them?"

I wonder how many publishers are willing to take that same stand today.
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The Samurai Responds

Jason Fell — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:53:13 -0500

I understand and appreciate my friend and industry colleague Tony Silber’s confusion over my recent stand defending print’s value and my refusal to accept customers’ blithe dismissal of the medium in favor of an exclusive online or lead-gen marketing strategy.

So, I thought it was worth clarifying my thoughts, which admittedly might have been influenced by falling a bit too hard for a literary metaphor. Most publishers have many children. Print. Banners. Newsletters. Lead generation. Webinars. And more. No one—including Tony—is saying print is dead or will disappear entirely from the mix. But we all admit print is quite ill. That "child" needs help, not neglect.

I refuse to acquiesce like most salespeople (and many publishers) and simply sell whatever is hot right now. That’s why it’s so rare in the industry for publishers to use outside rep firms—we all know that reps simply sell whatever is moving easily and we get no dedicated sales effort. It’s human nature for salespeople to hawk whatever is easiest to sell, instead of what we may believe is important to sell. It would be easy to just agree with clients’ assertions that print is dead. That’s where the danger lies. If we, as an industry, stop trying to sell print, it’s death becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We all know that our advertisers’ customers rely upon a huge variety of different influences (print, trade shows, word-of-mouth, online search, etc…) to understand a product and a brand and make a purchase. Everyone—publishers and marketers alike—talks about an integrated marketing plan being the most effective way to sell product. But marketers (and CFOs demanding accountability) would love to just live on “actionable leads” alone. Like children, they would love to just live on dessert. But in order to be healthy, they need to eat their vegetables too, and that’s where we come in.

We need to pitch integrated plans. We’re not samurais, limited to only one weapon and One Way. But one of those weapons is print and I am warning that if we do not sell it hard, if we just let it wither, it will do just that. So I don’t accept a marketer dismissing print out of hand. And to sell print in the modern environment my company has amassed a toolbox of data and measurements that get marketers very close to their desired accountability. (I will blog on that in the near future.)

As a media company serving the software development market, we are on the leading edge and have been selling lead generation actively for than four years and we run well over 125 individual programs per year. I have seen the future of that business and it’s not a happy conclusion I am drawing. It’s a downwardly spiraling commodity business where a lead is a lead is a lead and the source doesn’t matter.

Even on a very practical level, few marketers buy lead-gen or online programs on contract—they may buy a quarter at a time at best. Print is still bought annually (more than half in my case) in November and December of the year prior. I can go ahead and let my sales team blandly agree with the customer and laugh at the funny antiquated notion of—imagine!—print advertising, and we might sell 400 pages that walk through our reluctantly held-open door. Or we can fight like hell and get 500 pages—extra business that my lazy competitors didn’t bother to go after hard enough. That translates into a lot of money and I’m going to fight for it. That’s why I’m getting my team fired up about print and I suggest that others do the same.

I agree with Tony: We need to deal with the radical, deep and permanent changes in our industry. We need to grasp and learn how to master the future—and for the record, BZ Media and Ted Bahr are actively involved in doing this. BUT I see an industry that is agreeing too readily with marketers in the trendy and complete dismissal of print and that is dangerous. And that’s why I’m not giving an inch.
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How To Promote Online Events

Jason Fell — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:18:16 -0500

Online events, such as Webinars, are a cost-effective ways to build your business. Unfortunately, too many are promoted poorly because they’re not promoted enough. This approach leaves money on the table and hinders the growth of your customer file.

However, you can capture those lost dollars by developing a strategic online campaign—a series of coordinated messages fired off during a specific timeframe. Each message or “contact” builds on the previous efforts, giving the series momentum and intensity.

A campaign gives you added advantages: Multiple opportunities to reach prospects, an ongoing conversation rather than a single hit-or-miss contact, the chance to bond with your audience and build a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

Campaigns can be roughly divided into three stages: Before the event, concurrent with the event, and following the event. Here’s a recent case study to illustrate each phase. Weiss Publishing has become a master at selling with campaigns. Their Weiss Global Forum, a video conference scheduled for August 13, was free, but was nonetheless promoted relentlessly, creating exceptional value in the minds of readers. In addition to emails, it was also promoted in the company’s free daily e-zine.

The campaign began in earnest nine days earlier with a dedicated email sent on August 4. Prospects received a new email almost every day thereafter. Each message employed a different hook: Tying the video to timely news items, emphasizing the historic significance of the topic, trumpeting the credentials of the speakers and so on. The emails also counted down the hours until registration closed.

The second stage began the day after the video aired. Weiss sent an email with an invitation to view it for those who missed it or wanted to see it again. To keep interest high, they issued daily emails and framed their messages with a variety of classic direct-response techniques: Teasing prospects with highlights from the video as a way to sample it, asking registrants for their feedback to forge a stronger connection with their audience, and then sharing that feedback in yet another email and gaining social endorsements at the same time.

Of course, each contact was an effort to get new people to register, but these messages went a step further: They also contained genuinely valuable information—a key element for building long-term customer loyalty and distinguishing them from mere “sales” efforts.

The third and final part of the campaign began on August 17 with an announcement that the video would go offline on a specific date. Besides spurring action with a deadline, the messages also relied on time-tested psychological tactics to get a response. Whereas the first stage of the campaign pushed the greed button (secrets for prosperity to be revealed in the video), these emails stoked the prospects’ fear of missing out on something momentous (the risk to their well-being by not registering, guilt-tripping them for failing to respond to previous invitations).

In this final round of messages, another kind of countdown clock was used.

By all accounts, the campaign was a success. More than 18 separate contacts were used, excluding e-zine ads. The loyalty of existing Weiss customers deepened and the goodwill of future subscribers was established. In short, rapport was created that will likely lead to more sales whenever Weiss promotes a paid event.

But even if you don’t have the resources to mount an extensive campaign, you can still reap significant benefits. For example, KCI Communications enacted a more modest campaign for their paid Webinar; yet they were able to sell 133 slots and picked up a few additional sales after the event.

This brings us to the question of whether you should archive your events.

Many marketers keep them available indefinitely. Since they’re great lead-generating products, their long-tail viability can be exploited. Others maintain a one-time only policy. If you don’t archive your productions, then make them more exclusive by emphasizing the scarcity principle in your messages: Prospects more sharply crave the things they can’t have. Use that to your advantage.
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I’m Not Giving an Inch

Jason Fell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:32:02 -0500

Did you ever read “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey? Yes, the Ken Kesey with the psychedelic bus. Before the Merry Pranksters and after his successful “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Kesey penned this novel, one of the great works of American fiction, a sprawling tale of the struggles of a northwest logging family, the conflict between brothers, the small independent logging company the family owns and their fights against larger timber interests.

The most recurring metaphor in the book is fighting progress, alluded to in the form of the Stamper family home, which is built on a bend of a great river that is constantly eroding away the property. Over the years the Stampers built a crude series of barriers, wired posts and piers to prevent this from happening, but the river is relentless, as rivers will be. Some of the most vivid passages in the book portray the father and older brothers’ attempts to keep the river from destroying the property, typically out in the night in vicious storms, lashing the piers back together, fighting the river of progress, the river of change. The book was made into a film starring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, with the tagline embodying the philosophy of Henry Stamper, “Never Give an Inch.”

So, what does all this have to do with magazine publishing? Out west last week, I was pitching print (along with our online properties) to marketers who thought I had landed there from another planet. To one, print was so alien that he took a genuine interest in it. It was a novelty. More and more marketers start conversations by letting you know that they’re not doing print as a matter of fact. Many of my competitors and fellow high-tech publishers have given up, letting the river flow, and you can see the results in the steadily eroding group of high-tech titles still in print. I can’t quite explain why, but like Henry Stamper, I refuse to yield. I refuse to bend to the times, to just accept the advertiser’s misguided notions that print is dead and not even worth talking about. While I’m happy to sell a few white papers at the end of the call, most of the time I’m taking them out to the woodshed to disabuse them of their anti-print bias—whether they buy it today or not.

It’s up to those of us in the industry to stand up passionately for what we believe in and what we know to be true. The easy days of print as an accepted medium are over. Washed well downstream. But we know people are still reading our publications, and becoming aware of and interested in companies through the print ads. It’s up to us to lash together the arguments and fight.

We’re deep into contract season and I’m getting on planes to visit customers. And I'm not giving an inch.
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Boating Industry, Magazines Less Buoyant This Year

Jason Fell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:57:10 -0400

In this down economy, it isn’t any big surprise that automotive and financial have been two of the hardest-hit markets. Out of the 12 advertising categories tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau, they saw the steepest declines through the first nine months, with ad pages falling 47.3 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
Another industry that’s taken a beating this year is boating. I was reading the editor’s note yesterday on boating trade publication Soundings Trade Only’s Web site, written by Bill Sisson (he was my editor when I worked as a staff writer at Trade Only’s consumer-side sister Soundings magazine a few years ago—he now oversees editorial for both titles). In it, Sisson looked back over the last 12 months, detailing the dramatic impact the down economy has had on the boating industry.

One takeaway I found, well, astounding:
The job loss estimates are staggering for an industry our size. By some accounts, as many as 200,000 jobs—perhaps 75 percent of the work force—have vanished since 2005, with the vast majority of those coming from manufacturing.
And, inevitably, as that industry declined, so has the consumer boating magazine market. Through the first three quarters, the seven titles tracked by PIB averaged a 38.1 percent loss in ad pages. (I didn’t include Power Cruising since it folded in March). The industry average in ad page declines was 27.2 percent.

“When demand evaporated and wholesale credit became difficult to get, builders and dealers did their best to hold onto their cash,” Sisson told me of the declines in the boating industry. “Companies went into survival mode, shutting or slowing production lines, furloughing workers, cutting costs wherever they could, including their advertising budgets.”

Sounds a lot like what’s happened in magazine publishing. While Soundings has felt the same declines as other boating magazines (“we’ve held up as well as most, and better than some”), Sisson said magazine publishers in his market will need to keep a careful watch over expense control, as well continue to diversify their product portfolios beyond the printed page.

“Boating titles will need to develop a broad strategy for maintaining their current audience, winning new readers and viewers, and offering advertisers and other partners a 360-degree program for reaching target audiences,” he said.

Looking forward, Sisson hopes new products will help jumpstart demand in the boating industry. He said the industry is looking at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show next week as a barometer of sorts for how sales might fare in the coming months.

But are people actually budgeting for a new 40-footer this year? Maybe an Average Joe like me isn’t, but a die-hard boater might be, right?

Ad Page Totals Through the Third Quarter:
TITLE
2009 2008 % CHNG
Boating 320.26 648.30
-50.6
Boating Life
168.88 457.90 -63.1
Cruising World
625.19 763.32 -18.1
Motorboating
278.33 374.84 -25.7
Power & Motoryacht
674.55 1,531.79 -56.0
Sailing World
286.44
369.66 -22.5
Yachting
968.25 1,403.62 -31.0

Source: PIB

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‘Serious’ U.K. Publications Band Together for Marketing Push

Jason Fell — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:37:19 -0400

Is there a shortage of people reading “serious” magazines across the Atlantic?

Fifteen U.K.-based magazine publishers think so. They’ve formed the Cultural Publications Group, a joint marketing venture tasked with showing “the breadth of titles that are available at the more serious end of the market.”

The idea behind the initiative, so the group says, is to expose their magazines to a wider audience. Magazines participating in the collaboration include BBC Music, The Spectator, New Scientist, and The Week, among others.

Over the next several weeks, more than 1.3 million leaflets will be distributed (800,000 inside the group’s magazines, the rest in other magazines and newspapers) directing readers to a Web site where they can browse the group’s magazines and order subscriptions.

And, depending on how many issues are ordered, some subscription prices have been discounted more than 70 percent. One offer, for three issues of Lonely Planet magazine, for example, costs roughly $1.60. Another offer, for six issues of The Week, is free. That’s right. Completely free.

Haven’t we seen enough evidence that discounting subscriptions, especially during a time when advertising dollars are evaporating, doesn’t work? Sure, publishers get a few extra subscribers for a short time but what does it matter if they can’t turn those numbers into ad dollars? Selling a sub for pennies on the dollar (or a pence on the pound) doesn’t do much for a publisher’s bottom line.

To be fair, though, not all of the Cultural Publications Group’s subs are at bargain basement prices. For instance, while a three-issue order of BBC Music costs less than $5, a 39-issue order will cost more than $180.

And, the folks at Cultural Publications Group seem hopeful the effort will result in considerable ROI in terms of data sharing. “The value to the publishers is that it (should) help them gain more subscribers at a very low cost per order,” group co-organizer Don Brown wrote in an email to me this week. Brown—who serves as business development director for ThreePM, the company that built the group’s Web site and manages the subscription operation—was involved in an earlier iteration of the Cultural Publications Group from 2002 to 2005.

“All the magazines taking part are very savvy sub marketers and derive most of their revenue from their subscription income,” Brown continued. “The promotion allows them to cross sell to the other group members and to have visibility in media that they may not ordinarily be able to afford … The related benefit is that because all response data will be shared among the group, titles will be able to target the third party media that has been most successful for them.”

Interesting. So, might we expect to see a similar group pop up on this side of the pond, made up of magazines like the Economist and the Atlantic? I doubt it.
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Google to Make Publishers Rich with Display Ads?

Jason Fell — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:35:50 -0400

The news that Google will now broker display ads much as it does text ads is positioned by the company as being a way for publishers to make more money by selling remnant banner space. Here's the article in the WSJ [subscription only].

I have a few issues. First of all, many vertical niche publishers already have relationships in place with ad networks that suck up and sell all of their remnant space. For example, we partner with IDG TechNetwork and are generally happy. There are hundreds of other networks like this. But our experience and what I have heard from others is that the revenues from these sources just keep on dropping as inventory increases and advertisers demand more services for less cost-per-impression and cost-per-click.

As I have said before, the media business is suffering from not so much "dollars into dimes" but "dollars into pennies."

So, first, publishers are NOT going to make any significant money from this. (Four years ago we made $600 to $700 per month from Google adwords. More recently, it dropped to less than $100 per month. We have removed them from our site).

This experience, which is pretty universal unless your ad page view growth outstrips Google's decreasing returns, means that web publishers like us will tell Google to "take a hike."

I've also heard from customers—advertisers—that they are growing increasingly suspect of their Google adwords investments. As such, I don't even know if the idea will fly for Google. Not everything they do works.

Maybe by placing display ads on the blogs of individuals with day jobs who currently get no revenue for their efforts, they will be satisfied with a few hundred dollars per month versus nothing. But for professional Web publishers, for certain, the idea that Google is now going to make us rich is a joke.
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Report: P&G, J&J Lead the Pack in ’09 Print Ad Spending

Vanessa Voltolina — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:15:09 -0400

It’s no shock that TNS Media Intelligence’s U.S. Advertising Expenditures report, which was released Wednesday, showed print media continuing to see ad page rollbacks: specifically, a 20.9 percent total decline. Among the publishing sectors hardest hit were Spanish Language Magazines (-27.3 percent) and B-to-B (-26.7 percent), with Consumer Magazines faring better (or, less badly?) at 20.1 percent.
Despite another round of bleak numbers for the industry, one bright spot is that this data reports that global advertisers are still spending in print.
TNS Media Intelligence told FOLIO: that Procter & Gamble ranked number one among advertisers devoting the most advertising dollars to magazines in the first half of 2009, spending P&G spent $406.7 million. Despite topping the charts, P&G, as well as other high-ranking Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods and L’Oreal, ultimately spent less in the first half of 2009 versus the same period in 2008.
But recession-friendly advertisers Wal-Mart, Unilever and Campbell Soup Co.—ranking fifth, sixth and seventh in ad spending for 2009—did up their print spending. Wal-Mart alone grew from $120 million in 2008 to $128.8 million print advertising dollars this year over last, while others, including Time Warner and Clorox, bucked the trend.

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American Apparel Squeezed Over ‘Inappropriate’ Ad in Vice

Jason Fell — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:24:40 -0400

I’m surprised it took this long.

American Apparel, the mega clothing retailer known as much for its risqué advertisements as it is for its cotton t-shirts and underwear, has had an ad campaign banned by the Advertising Standards Authority, a U.K. advertising regulator.

The campaign, which appeared on the back cover of the U.K. edition of irreverent New York-based magazine Vice, featured a series of six photos of a “young looking girl” wearing the retailer’s “Flex Fleece” zip-up hoody. In the photos, the girl was seen “exposing progressively more skin in each photo in the series,” suggesting that “she was stripping off for an amateur-style photo shoot,” the ASA said.

In its ruling, the ASA banned the ad claiming it “could be seen to sexualise a model who appeared to be a child, under the age of 16 years” and concluded that it was “inappropriate and could cause serious offence to some readers.” In a statement, American Apparel said it agreed to stop using the ad, but also noted that the ASA’s assessment was in response to “a single citizen complaint.”

While I can’t say I’m shocked that American Apparel’s racy ads caught the ire of an advertising watchdog (and previously of film director Woody Allen), I find this story tough to swallow for two reasons. One: That U.K.’s big ad regulator would expend enough resources to ban an ad campaign based on just one complaint. And, two: Out of all of American Apparel’s advertising partners—online and in print—that Vice magazine was the platform for this controversy.

American Apparel’s half naked models shouldn’t be anything new for Vice readers. The retailer has been advertising in the magazine since its first issue launched in 2003.
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How Publishers Profit When Advertisers are Publishers

Jason Fell — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:48:11 -0400

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 likely offers content from a different point of view. Where can all of their customers go for an objective perspective? Hopefully to your community/Web site.

Social Media Today CoFounder and CEO Robin Carey refers to this objective function as "being an honest broker of third party content.” Your social media centric clients will understand the value in this.

But it is not enough just to be an "honest broker." You need to leverage your content so you can deliver a benefit advertisers will pay for.

There are two essential steps:
1. You must become your markets content aggregator. As a third party content supplier you can credibly aggregate content in your market from all suppliers. No one of your advertisers can do this as they will hit resistance and credibility problems posting content from competitors. Some traditional publishers have problems posting a lot of content they did not create or influence. I say, get over it. If the law of the jungle is kill or be killed, then the law of the Internet is aggregate or be aggregated. Here is the really bad news; if you don't do the aggregation, another publisher in your market will.

2. Shape your content so you get 3rd party credit in "search." When people search for objective content as they enter a buying cycle will they recognize yours? “Search” never evaluates the quality or objectivity of an article. So you need to “sell” potential readers on this benefit who find you though search. For a moment, take the point of view of a Google searcher who has never heard of your brand but sees an article of yours in a search list. If your article is worded to indicate an objective perspective it will be opened over others. An article titled "The five leading buying trends in electric fans" can become "Our editors pick the top five buying trends in electric fans." Etc.
On the Call

Earlier this year I did a study for the social media website "The Energy Collective." In this post based on the survey we see that the community spits over the question, “Should the gas tax be substantially raised?” As an “honest broker” of content "The Energy Collective" supports all points of view.

For advertisers this is invaluable. Do you think the same divide would occur on a website/community built by the Sierra Club or Exxon/Mobile? Nope.

But If I were the marketing manager of either the Sierra Club or Exxon/Mobile where will I find new people to convert to my perspective? Not on my own website, I would need my message carried by an “honest broker.”
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The Race to the Bottom

Matt Kinsman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:24:31 -0400

It seems to me as if media companies are falling all over one another in a race to price themselves out of business. First, print, with a few exceptions such as SD Times, is in a death spiral. We know that many many publications are on their way out. But it seems that media companies in jumping on the online bandwagon are so desperate for sales - any sales - that they are pricing themselves into oblivion.

Because there are very low barriers to entry on the Internet there are often dozens or even hundreds of places that an advertiser MIGHT find a buyer. Which websites are best?? Dunno, wonders the ad buyer, who then concludes that it must be the ones that generate the most clicks or have lower prices.

What about the hundreds of blogs or websites that might mention your product or be "on topic?" The popular solution has become the so-called Ad Network, which acts like a broker. Advertisers can place one banner with an Ad Network, and it'll appear on hundreds of websites. At the opposite end of the business, website owners can sell their "inventory" of banner spots via the Ad Network with no effort - especially leftover, or remnant, space.

Sound like win-win? It's not. It's lose-lose.

When websites - with their carefully crafted content, expensive designs and unique readers - become just another member of an Ad Network, do you know what they are? A commodity. An eyeball aggregator. Nothing more.

When you're part of an Ad Network, a click is a click is a click and the lowest price wins every time. Therefore, the Ad Networks, with the willing cooperation of publishers and advertisers, are slashing prices in an effort to compete with one another. A network I use recently told me their standard CPM (cost per thousand impression) for remnant space was dropping to 50 CENTS. That's one million impressions generating $500 in revenue. Who can stay in business for that? (We told them they were not to sell any remnant space on our site.)

Plus, the Ad Networks are now being asked to serve up certain sections, pages, niches within their website. Slicing and dicing. This means that a network advertiser will buy fewer impressions - less money for publishers - as it cherry-picks only specific parts of websites. Where does this end?

Maybe Rupert Murdoch has figured this out as he brashly said today, "ENOUGH," we're not giving our content away for free anymore: It's like a take-off on the New Hampshire state motto: "Give Free and Die" Oh I know, everyone says lead-gen is the answer - I don't think so. Stay tuned.

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Paid Content and Blog Sponsorships Generate Highest E-Profits

Jason Fell — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:13:14 -0400

The wisdom of paid online content is still debatable but blog sponsorships and paid content are the most profitable e-media revenue streams, with more than 50 percent of respondents saying they see a profit margin of more than 30 percent from these two products, according to the 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey.

However, just eight percent of publishers sell sponsorships against blogs and only 28 percent offer paid content.

Of course, that doesn’t mean blogs and paid content are generating significant revenue at this point. Paid content was the fourth largest e-media revenue stream for magazine publishers today (banner advertising remains the largest).

However, 32 percent of respondents said banner advertising was the least profitable e-media revenue stream, generating profit margins of less than 10 percent, followed by online directories.

The 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey tracks e-media performance for magazine publishers including fastest growing revenue streams, product pricing, product investment and e-media profitability. The survey will be available in full later this year.

Most Profitable E-Media Revenue Streams:
Profit Margin > 30%+

Paid Content
50%
Blog Sponsorship
56%

Least Profitable E-Media Revenue Streams:
Profit Margin < 10%

Banner Advertising
32%
Online Directories
30%

Source: 2009 FOLIO: E-Media Survey
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Social Media is Now Your Business

Jason Fell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:30:42 -0400

The findings of my recent study, "The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications,” should give traditional publishers a reason to take another look at social media. Results showed that social media is used as a general communications tool in public relations and marketing, but is evolving into a major tool of customer engagement.

Research found that companies are now looking to social media as a primary way to engage their customers, enabling lead generation, immediate customer contact and customer interaction.

As content publishers, consider that all ads and sponsorships sold are for this same goal; customer engagement. If social media becomes a primary way that this happens then you need to be a part of it. Luckily, a lot of what goes into building social networks is about leveraging focused content. That’s something publishers know a lot about, and should see as an opportunity.

The Social Media Shift

This study, to my knowledge, is the first to measure a coming shift in how companies will use social media. There are several factors driving this trend.

First, with more people spending time on online social media sites and companies are realizing a lot of their customers can be found there.

Second, the shift to online communications has made it easier for potential customers to dodge traditional lead generation and sales strategies. Social media can help break the ice.

Finally, a recession is causing every company to rethink its customer engagement strategy.

The report offers an overview of the shift toward uses in social media as well as measurements specific to Twitter and social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. (I had the good fortune to interview social media gurus Brian Solis, Shel Holtz, Dan Schnabel, Ari Herzog and Dan McCarthy.)

For publishers, this is a real opportunity and an important trend to get in front of.

Click here to download the full report.
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National Geographic Rolls Out $19.99 Custom Cover Initiative

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:49:59 -0400

MyShot, National Geographic’s popular social hub that allows users to submit and vote on photos, and YourShot, the related submission site—have been two of the magazine industry’s few unmitigated successes on the Web.

Now, the magazine is offering readers an opportunity to customize the cover of a special print issue—National Geographic’s Your Shot—that will feature “101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years.”

Wired, you might recall, was one of (if not the) first national magazine to allow readers to customize a cover.

The July 2007 project—funded by Xerox—netted Wired great press, but pulling together the issue, as one former staffer told me, was a “logistical nightmare.”

National Geographic, though, might be looking for some incremental revenue, too. Via the press release:
Looking for a unique Father's Day gift? One that fulfills the fantasy of having a favorite photograph featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine? This month, National Geographic is publishing a special collector's edition, National Geographic Your Shot, featuring 101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years. Starting Monday, June 15, readers can create and order a unique, customized cover of this special issue, using a photograph of their choice, by going to ngm.com/your-shot-special. The customized version makes a perfect gift to memorialize a special family snapshot.
The custom cover option for National Geographic Your Shot will be available to order, online only, for $19.99 plus shipping. The issue goes on newsstands with a standard cover on Tuesday, June 30, for $10.99.

The 144-page issue, with a trim size of 7"x7", also will also contain advertising—from HP, Fuji and Energizer, among others.
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TITLE	2009	2008	% CHNG
Boating	320.26	648.30	-50.6
Boating Life	168.88	457.90	-63.1
Cruising World	625.19	763.32	-18.1
Motorboating	278.33	374.84	-25.7
Power & Motoryacht	674.55	1,531.79	-56.0
Sailing World	286.44	369.66	-22.5
Yachting	968.25	1,403.62	-31.0

Profit Margin > 30%+
Paid Content	50%
Blog Sponsorship	56%

Profit Margin < 10%
Banner Advertising	32%
Online Directories	30%