Good News… Online Will Win!

A few weeks ago I spoke at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. I was struck at the conference that people in our industry had their heads down. I recognize the economy is tough and that jobs can be hard to find and keep. But guess what… online advertising will win!

Like you, I have friends in traditional media. Newspapers and print in general have been hammered. Radio and outdoor is fading and television is showing signs of weakness. The dollars are shifting to online and with good reason. In my preparation for the presentation (which can be found here) I spoke to senior executives at digital agencies and leading online advertisers. While the title of my presentation was, “Measurement Matters” the focus was on change.

There is no doubt that the world of online advertising is at a crossroads. According to a recent IBM survey, over 60% of all advertisers are cutting budgets… 80% of them are trimming more than 15% of the spending. This urgency was clear in this quote from the report,

“Advertisers are aggressively shifting their spend to even more interactive, measurable formats, as providers struggle to move "beyond advertising" to new forms of communication that combine the ROI characteristics of direct marketing with the brand characteristics of traditional advertising.”

The tone I heard when speaking to advertisers and agencies was consistent… “Now more than ever, we need to be sure we get what we pay for”. Jobs are on the line, performance is not optional and measurement matters.

Where can advertisers get better value and solid analytics for performance advertising? Online of course! I’ve identified five specific attitudes that need to be addressed to fully capitalize on the shifting dollars…

1) Stand on our strengths – Online advertising is measureable, has a growing reach and new and creative ways to deliver meaningful ad impressions to consumers. These are meaningful strengths that need to be communicated.
2) Tout the targeting –Saying that television advertising can target is like saying you can tell what kind of fish are in the water from the boat. Targeting (behavioral, demographic and geographic) is a strong suit of online advertising that is unmatched in traditional advertising.
3) Get creative with compensation - Advertisers need to (and will) hold agencies feet to the fire. Agencies that embrace this and are open to new models of compensation, will win.
4) Measure, measure and measure – Performance standards, benchmarking and goals are critical for success. The good news is that online holds that as a competitive advantage over traditional media. More tools are available to help with this and insight into campaigns makes a major difference in success.
5) Look beyond the “Big Two” – Yahoo and Google hold a lot of the cards when it comes to online. However, there is a growing community of quality ad networks and publishers that can deliver strong results. I’ll talk more about how to find them in a future post.

My presentation included the chart below highlighting a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis I did on our space.



The current economic conditions create an opportunity for those of us in the digital world. Now is not the time to complain… it is the time to aggressively promote the benefits that online holds over traditional media.

Tom Cuthbert

The Future of Newspapers

A few weeks ago I noticed that the Business section was missing form my Sunday paper.  I vented by posting a tweet and followed up by sending an email to the business editor of the paper.  After a few days I received a well written reply. It stated, 

Unfortunately, we have discontinued the Sunday and Monday Business sections. We are not happy about it, but at the end of the day it was an action that had to be taken for the good of the institution. I am sure you are aware that we are on the cusp of technological, cultural and generational forces that are reshaping the information landscape. Add to that the most corrosive financial environment since the Great Depression and you can see the perfect storm that has slammed into the traditional business model for the general circulation newspaper.

First of all, I appreciate him taking time to respond.  I enjoy reading actual newspapers and read several of them every day.  I recognize that the industry is changing and in deep turmoil, but it seems to me there are lots of other areas to cut besides the Business section.  Maybe I'm not a typical reader since my favorite publication is the Wall St. Journal.      

My response was, in part...

Thank you for writing me back.  I recognize the difficulties all print publications have as people change habits to online.  I have followed the Seattle PI switch with interest and you are right, it is a changing world.  I know you guys are in a tough spot.  I certainly don't have the answers.  I can tell you as a technology person in this community I rely on your paper to keep me informed.  I will also tell you that  dropping Sunday and Monday will cause me to consider my subscription.    I encourage you to think of ways to enhance the coverage, more deeply engage readers, pull in more regional information and create new ways to rebuild, not retrench.  (Twitter and other social media outlets may hold some answers)

So what is the future for papers like mine?  Henry Blodget wrote and interesting article titled, "Our Plan to Fix the New York Times".  In it he discusses several options for papers.  In the end, the business model is flawed given the access to data that people have.  Blogs, micro papers and online publications are pulling readership away from print.  Classified ads are less effective than ever now that they compete with Craigslist and EBay.  Even searching for homes has moved from print to Zillow and other online sites.

At the end of the day I do believe I predicted the future correctly when I wrote, 'Future conversation with my son (circa 2034) "Really Pop?  Someone actually 'threw' a PAPER copy of the news on our driveway?  No way!".  

Too bad, but that is the direction we are heading.

Tom Cuthbert