I just read this NYT piece about how newspapers are using online data to refine their strategies, from what is presented where and for how long on the WSJ home page to whether “long-form video” works online at the Post. One thing caught my eye:
At a recent meeting with the top online editors of The Los Angeles Times, a consulting group that helps media companies enhance profits from their Web sites pitched new software that it said could change the industry. The newsroom would be able to know how much money — down to the penny — each of its articles online was making when readers clicked on ads.
“I could see a business case for it,” said Mr. [Sean] Gallagher [LAT managing editor of online operations], who hastened to add, “I don’t agree with that business case.”
Thank God. But here’s the part I don’t get: Why do I have to click on an ad to make it profitable to the paper? Why do I, as a reader, have to engage with an online ad in order for it to register any money made?
Does it make me old that I don’t want to click on ads? It’s not because I hate ads — as a consumer, I find it very useful that places I shop might pay some money for a banner ad to advertise an upcoming sale — but because I just don’t need that level of engagement in my life. I have other things to do. If you’ve got something to sell me on, sell me in the banner; don’t expect me to spend time clicking through to your lavishly designed website where I can learn Even More. I don’t want to know Even More. I want to know how long the sale will last.
I’m sure someone will say that I’m asking news ads online to work like news ads in the newspaper. I guess I am. But why shouldn’t they? People didn’t stop reading newspapers because the ads were boring or not interactive enough. They stopped reading newspapers because they started reading online.
So, dear corporate America, I ask you to keep this in mind: I am a smart, busy woman. (Single, employed full time, don’t own a home = lots of expendable income, at least according to where I fit in the bell curve.) I might want to buy what you have to sell. But I don’t want to give you my time in order to be sold on it. And frankly, how dare you expect that of me?
Dear newspapers, can you figure a way around this please? Charge more for your banner ads or something? Because if you’re waiting for me to click on the link before you make real money, you’re gonna wait a long, long time.
And I humbly refer both of you to all the pop science articles floating around about how our digital addictions and ADD are ruining our brains, our health, our relationships, and any number of other things. So don’t add fuel to the fire, eh?
Very interesting…the other problem with online ads is that they’re based on the “interruption model” of marketing. To summarize seth godin’s, book purple cow:
Maybe a decade ago advertisers/marketers could get away with this, and people would pay attention to their interruptions. But now we just keep developing ways to screen out the interruptions – TiVO, pop-up ad blockers, etc.
Marketers can’t demand our attention like that anymore. Instead, it’s a whole new game of “permission marketing” where marketers have to ask for our permission to sell to us. And they have to create things that we want to hear about. It’s a whole new game.
Hi Jina
I’m a recent reader of your blog and I found this post really relevant. I was thinking about recently, especially as there was a commentary article that basically said companies have no hope of making enough on online ads to replace print ad revenue (Who actually clicks on ads when they’re reading articles or watching clips online?). A lot of newspapers/media orgs are finding it hard to make money from online ads, and it stems from the low rates and the fact that advertisers can measure how many people click onto their ads on the media sites. I was thinking that it is sad because not many people pay attention to tv and print ads either but advertisers pay big bucks because they assume the number of tv viewers/newspaper readers is the audience. There needs to be a value mindset shift for online advertising as you said because charging based on number of clicks will never make money (except for Google and that’s only because of the sheer scale of their ads and reach). Advertisers should be made to pay for online ads according to the number of site readers as they would for a print ad, as it’s determined by the paper’s circulation.