How to Secure an Advertiser for Your Blog

Here’s a good post on ProBlogger about how bloggers can attract advertisers or “sponsors” to their blog. The take away:

  1. Know your product (i.e. the advertising you are selling and your audience).
  2. Market yourself.
  3. Make it easy for the buyer to buy.
  4. Don’t worry about exposing your pricing, inventory, etc.

We added a comment to that post:

1) It’s important to recognize that not everyone can and deserves to generate revenue this way. Direct sales / sponsorships work really well for some types of blogs, and poorly for others.

2) Put yourself in the mindset of selling a product. When you sell ads, you are a merchant delivering a product (your audience) to your customer (your advertiser). Treat it as if it were a box of goods.

3) Make it easier to find and purchase your inventory. Advertisers won’t jump through hoops to buy your $50 125×125 button.

This goes along with a presentation we give about how to make money from blogging.

Happy holidays!

December 23, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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Op-Ed: Old Media Need Not Die

Last week saw the Tribune filing bankruptcy, the New York Times borrowing against its HQ, Detroit newspapers ending home delivery and an 18% decline in newspaper ad spend. Amidst all this chaos, I wrote an Op-Ed and submitted it to the Wall Street Journal. It was rejected. Enjoy.

Who Will Be The Next Tribune?

Small Changes Can Save Old Media Revenue

This week’s bankruptcy of Tribune Co may well be the first of several large media groups to fall. “Old media” companies have been focusing on the wrong questions and implementing the wrong strategies. The good news? There is still hope – and with a few small changes to how ad inventory is sold and executed, the industry can survive in an ever-changing world.

All aboard the U.S.S. Failboat

"All aboard the U.S.S. Failboat!"

In new media circles it is considered passé to discuss old media’s advertising revenue woes, as if it were a foregone conclusion decided ages ago. Like most of our world’s current headlines it was one of those things that many people knew was coming but few attempted to address. Some now consider the Tribune to be the first real, hard-hitting casualty and a validation of these cocktail party narratives.

However, much of the commentary about the “freefall” of old media revenue is misguided. The primary reason for the decline of newspaper ad dollars is not the competition from blogs and web content or the bad habits of new generations. There still is demand for thought-provoking newspapers and great TV shows. As such, the ads placed against them maintain real, tangible value.

The real reason that revenue has shifted towards new media is that the internet provides an easier and better way for advertising to be bought and sold. Online advertisements aren’t magical or inherently superior to old media ads. They are prone to the same problems such as fatigue, conditioning, incorrect targeting, and faulty metrics. But online ads have less friction, are easier for buyers of any size to purchase and offer a wealth of other benefits that only the web provides.

Online advertising has exploded in part because it’s simply easier for both buyers and sellers to conduct their business. Old media overlooked this point as they scrambled to compete with web advertising as a medium – newspapers vs. blogs, TV vs. YouTube, classifieds vs. craigslist – when they should’ve been competing with, or at least copying, the processes and technology that facilitate online advertising. As Brian Wheelis, a SVP at the GSD&M ad agency, said: “If you think about the Web as cannibalizing, you’ve already given up and you’re not ready for it.”

For example, offering a primetime sitcom in HD and as an iPhone download is great for appealing to modern audiences. But if ad sales are still conducted by snail mail, is it any surprise that dollars are voting with their feet? That’s why even as newspapers move their content online, with new projects like the just-announced New York Times’ “Times Extra,” digital revenue still fell 3% in Q3 compared to the same period last year.

Jeff Zucker, the head of NBC Universal, said earlier this year that the media industry had to work so that “we do not end up trading analog dollars for digital pennies.” Pricing economics aside, this isn’t old media’s primary concern. You can’t change the fact that the atomization of content creates more inventory and shifts supply vs. demand. What’s important is building systems that can monetize through scale, similar to online search and display ads.

Perhaps a more appropriate rally call would have been “we should trade analog processes for digital dollars.”

Sure, the Tribune had debt issues and a convergence of factors forced the bankruptcy timing. But it wouldn’t have been in this situation if the revenue was there. To its credit, Tribune leaders at least began to understand the process problem and started to move inventory “into the cloud” with projects like a joint ad network, QuadrantONE. The Tribune just didn’t have enough time. How much do the others have?

Tough times like these are said to craft the best startups by forcing focus, ingenuity and passion. When a group of smart, talented people are stuck in a paper bag in a dark damp corner, they engineer their way out. They don’t play by the rules or abide by what the neighboring paper bag opines.

So far most of old media’s efforts to punch through their bags have been lackluster. However, there have been a few shining examples of progressive thinking and action, such as the online video joint venture Hulu.com – which was once referred to as ClownCo by some in the business.

Enter the silver lining. Given the cautionary tale of the Tribune, old media now has the capital they’ve been waiting for – the justified permission to take radical action and act like a nothing-to-lose startup. Over the last two months some Silicon Valley CEOs have used this same capital to trim the fat through layoffs and alter business models without looking like doomed dot-bombs. Media CEOs now have the same opportunity. Will they capitalize on it?

Start making inventory, whether it’s a radio commercial or quarter page print layout, just as accessible, frictionless, mixable and accountable as an online advertisement.

Keep the parts that are special, standardize the rest. For example there are some ad mediums that will never have the measurability or results-based pricing that online ads can deliver. But a search engine ad can never entertain you the way a well-done commercial can.

Focus first on accessibility. Identify and remove the barriers and frictions that make inventory less attractive than a web ad. Make it easier for buyers to find, purchase and execute inventory as part of larger 360-degree campaigns.

This is accomplished by moving ad inventory “into the cloud.” In other words, moving the inventory and processes behind it onto the web, allowing for connectivity and smoother transactions. Inventory doesn’t have to be put into commoditized marketplaces or conform to the rules of some ad network. Nor should old media build multimillion dollar proprietary solutions without fully addressing the issue of scale and interoperability.

Old media must turn to the web and the thought leaders behind it for answers, or they risk becoming the latest punch line at those new media cocktail parties – or worse, a bankruptcy headline.

December 19, 2008 | Filed Under Advertising, Community, Company, Events

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Data On The Web Display Ad Market

The first application built on the isocket platform is a direct sales application for web display ads. In simple terms, its a tool for website owners to sell banners on their own without using an ad network. This is what most of our current private Beta testers are using – in fact, you can see two demonstration ad spots (125×125’s) in the right column of this blog.

This “economic crisis” has caused a lot of discussion about the decline in the ad market and what 2009 will be like. There are a few areas, like newspaper and radio (see tomorrows post about this topic) that have really tanked.

In the online ad market, some doom and gloom predictions talk about a decline of 1 or 2%. The average prediction is that the market will grow only 2 to 3%. While that looks bad when compared to the 20% or more growth web ads experienced over the last few years, 2% growth in this climate is still growth.

What we wanted to highlight is that it’s not always the top-line market numbers that are important, but the shifts happening within that market.

Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson wrote a great post about how display advertising works differently than search. The important part:

The basic insight from the report is that display advertising does not normally result in an immediate click. That makes sense because the ad is not being presented in a moment of purchase intent, like a search ad is. But the ad does create interest in the product or service which is realized at some later date in the form of a site visit, a search query, and possibly on online or offline purchase.

This jives with a study that showed display advertising metrics may not capture all of the value or results.

A Specific Media study finds the presence of display advertising significantly affects click-through and search style across both paid and organic searches. Findings suggested consumers exposed to display ads are more likely to search for brand terms (like “BMW”) and segment terms (like “635 CSi”) than unexposed ones.

A new report called “No Improvement on Horizon for Standard Online Advertising” outlines the minimal/flat growth over the next year. But look at the two graphs associate with that post:

Local ad shift

Local ad growth

While everyone is focused on the top-line decline, advertisers that want to reach “local” audiences are spending more than ever before.

“Local” should include niche, targeted and small business advertisers – they all want to buy display advertising, but don’t have the budget or the need to buy national level campaigns. Direct sales, where an advertiser and a website publisher work together to buy/sell an ad, is the best way to achieve this.

But “local” advertisers still have a hard time with web ads. As buyers want more narrowly targeted display ad audiences, they will need an easier way to purchase those ads.

And that’s exactly what isocket does. Our service makes it easier for those “local” buyers and sellers to connect and conduct these more narrowly targeted campaigns, without all the mess and hassle that usually comes along with it.

December 19, 2008 | Filed Under Advertising, Beta, Community, Features

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New Feature: Website Metrics Box

metricsA few weeks ago we introduced a new modular Socket page that would allow for custom extensions.  These extensions will give additional information about the advertising opportunity.

The first one out the door is Website Metrics; a website metric mashup using API’s from various ranking and analytic sites.  The Website Metrics extension will show ad buyers info from the web’s most popular ranking services in one box.

You can find thousands of posts discussing if web rankings and page ranks are even of value.  We believe each number by itself is only a piece of the puzzle.  To make a proper decision about a web property or piece of inventory, you need it all: stats, metrics, audience, profiles, ROI analysis, and your gut. When in doubt, more info is always better.

Extensions (could also be called widgets, plugins, etc) will start to play a more important role on the Socket page in the near future.  If you have any additional thoughts or suggestions on extensions that we or you could build, let us know.

Website Metrics:

December 10, 2008 | Filed Under Beta, Features

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