Advertising News & Articles

This week in Web Publishing brings us some sage advice, courtesy of ReadWriteWeb COO, Bernard Lunn.

He encourages bloggers and journalists to look optimistically to the future, rid ourselves of all the bad elements of what weighs the publishing industry down and keep the parts that make up happy -- namely a strong desire to find the truth, among others.

He also recommends evaluating the reasons we rely and respect true journalism and ultimately accept that it costs money. "Until we as an industry can do a better job at monetizing quality at correlating quality with revenue," Lunn says "the sensible business decision is simply to go after page views, any page views."

Of late it's been nothing but doom 'n gloom here in the publishing business. Many are hurting and many heads are already rolling. To say the least, most organizations are skeptical of big marketing and advertising spends in these lean times. That tends to hurt us where it counts most.

Lately there's been much dialog about what to do, how to act, how to survive or how to just get away from it all. Publishers are frantically trying to cut costs without having to throw the baby out with the bath water. Are we to be reduced to blogging for food, one asks?

We think not. By the numbers, the smart money stays put. Here's why.

All we’ve been hearing lately is how bad the economy is, how bad the advertising industry is, how much publishers are going to suffer. However, amid uncertain times, Dapper hopes to break through the pack with Dapper MashupAds, which takes a few pages from Google AdSense and a few pages of its own. It results in a fresh product that might stir up some needed innovation for display and contextual advertising.

The once financially-juggernaut world of online advertising seems to be coming face to face with these mortal times. In March, back in happier times, a report by eMarketer projected that online ad spending would rise by 23% this year.

A few days ago, eMarketer reported about the online ad spending data for 2008. Though the numbers seem “generally strong,” showing sustained growth in a variety of advertising categories, classified ad spending was down by more than 5%.

While most social networking sites struggle to find advertisers to fill their niche consumer bases, LinkedIn proves that it’s a good place not only for professionals to show off, but for advertisers as well.

LinkedIn, the social network for business folks, has decided to launch its own advertising network in collaboration with ad network Collaborative Media to secure ads from high-end websites.

Where women go, advertising follows. The web is no exception.

As we’ve mentioned before, women appear to outnumber men online, with many writing, reading or otherwise contributing to blogs. And advertisers are finally getting hip to their jive.

ComScore results, as highlighted in a recent New York Times article, indicated that advertisers served up “4.4 billion display ads on women’s Web sites in May” and that women’s sites had recorded 84 million visitors in July 2008.

Think about the last time you saw an ad in a newspaper and went online to learn more about it. Come to think of it, think about the last time you read a print newspaper. New research suggests it’s more common than you think. Actually, it’s 50 percent more common.

Microsoft, who has been on quite the buying spree as of late, confirmed its purchase of Seattle-based airfare prediction and travel site Farecast earlier this month for what is believed to be around US $115 million.

Never one to settle in and savor the moment, Microsoft has gone out and done it again. They recently bought Rapt Inc., a web publishing vendor out of San Fransisco. This acquisition is just the latest in a number to fill Microsoft’s suite of publishing and advertising tools.

The move “puts us way ahead of what other offerings are available in the market,” Scott Howe, a general manager in Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions group said, likening Microsoft with Rapt to a jet plane, with rivals, including Google, being a bicycle.

Ooh! Burn to Google.

But did they really put their money where their mouth is?

Ok, what is Google thinking? Just a day after announcing they acquired Advertising Guru DoubleClick, Google announced they are offering a “free” ad serving platform.

According to estimates from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) advertising spend on newspaper websites jumped by 21.1%, to US$ 773 million in Q3 2007 vs. Q3 2006.

The increase reflects the fourteenth consecutive quarter of double digit growth for online newspaper advertising, a metric NAA has been tracking since 2004. Web advertising now accounts for 7.1% of total newspaper ad revenues, as compared to 5.4 % a year ago.

But the picture ain’t all rosy.

When I say “contextual content network,” you say “pattern proximity.” Got it?

Contextual content network. (Pattern proximity!)

Very good. Now what exactly does that mean?

A start-up called Proximic has launched a network designed to overcome the limitations of contextual advertising technologies; that is, search and online advertising platforms based on keywords, which tend to miss the “core meaning of articles,” result in irrelevant or inappropriate advertisements, and make it harder to monetize online properties.

Citizen Image, a user-generated “photojournalist” firm, has just joined Mochila as yet another premier content provider.

We always thought the term “premier” had something to do with being either first or exclusive. In Mochila’s case, the title has little significance in either respect. Somebody should mail a dictionary in the company’s direction.

In any event this most current partnership — building upon recent liaisons with Reuters and Belo, also premier content providers — is supposed to demonstrate how Mochila is changing the online content syndication or advertising marketplace or some similar thing.

Citizen Image will participate in AdMatch, which enables online publishers to both buy and syndicate content at no cost, in exchange for a percentage of the accompanying ad revenue.

CEO Keith McAllister of Mochila calls the Citizen Image relationship “a tremendous step towards the growth of our photo library […] indicative of the demand for all forms of content, professional and user generated.”

Bellissimo!

Belo Corp., one of the nation’s largest media companies, joins the fast-growing Mochila network as a premier content syndicator.

Last month we reported that Mochila, the first global online media marketplace for print, video, and photo content, announced a partnership with Clickability. This development created “a broader distribution channel for client content” and “an outlet to earn money via Mochila’s innovative AdMatch program.”

With access to Clickability’s clients, including NBC, CNN, Editor & Publisher, and the Wall Street Journal, who would have thought the pot could get any sweeter?

Here’s a big lesson for us: the pot can always get sweeter. On Monday Mochila announced that Reuters, the global information company, has joined as one of its premier content providers.