Ad Sales Blog

Should you publish a digital circulation hybrid?

Yesterday, the weekly print publication PRWeek announced it will shift its distribution from a weekly print publication to a hybrid model that includes a monthly print edition and a weekly digital edition. Does this print-digital model make sense?

Last week publishers considering the "cold turkey" transition from all print distribution to all digital got a chill of their own from Seattle. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a local newspaper, shifted from all print to all digital and watched their website traffic plummet by 23%.

Loyal magazine readers are creature of habit.  They tend to like things the way they are, which is why they are subscribers to one magazine and not another. I have researched several spectacular magazine redesigns that clearly took their publications to another level, only to hear back from the "loyal readers" that the redesign "looks different, and will take a while to get used to."

The hybrid approach can reduce the “shock of the new” and help readers “get used to it.”

 

Thank you too!

Since blogging can be a solitary job, fan mail is both appreaciaed and shared:  

Hello!  I just want to say thanks for posting on the web.  I started in my current position in August of last year selling ad space for an association.  My previous sales experience comes from selling traffic & light poles in Texas.  So, it was quite a different animal to work with.   Along with this, my schooling was to be a legal assistant.  So, I do have quite an undertaking.  But, I can relate to my advertisers in that I have some choral background and with my love for music, I see this as a good challenge.

With the economy this year our sales have declined.  So, I am working with the executive director to find different avenues of advertising to sell, which right now is selling space on our website.  But, your thoughts on selling packages really intrigue me and I am going to compile a few “test” packages to see how this goes.

  Again, thanks!  It is an encouragement to me.

Heidi Harmon
National Sales Associate
American Choral Directors Association

E-mail: volume up, open rates up, click rates down

As you fight to sell that E-mail sponsorship, some of the numbers might be against you. While every content publisher's newsletter is different, if the one you sell is tracking along with what is going on though out the web, your click throughs are down.

If this becomes an issue, I recommend you bring this just released study from Epsilon on your next call. The study is based on the performance of 7.7 billion promotional E-mails in Q4 2008. While we don't sell ads in the direct marketing campaigns these E-newsletters represent, we share the same Internet and readers. It is the behavior of both of these that should concern us. Survey results:

Bad news: Promotional direct mail volume is way up of year prior, 19% up! Our newsletters are competing with a lot more volume in the in box.

Good news: open rates are up. " Open rates increased for the third quarter in a
row."

Bad news: Click through rates dropped .1% over year prior to the lowest level Epsilon has recorded. 

Check your open and click rates. If open rates are up you need to use these numbers to counter the drop in click rates that clients could see as a sign of bad performance. This study can add a third part validation for the view that a drop in click throughs does not have to indicate a less effective campaign.

Download the free study

 

Has the recession bottomed out?

 Last weeks often contrarian Economist made a cautiously optimistic case that the US Economy is improving. The article ticked through housing, economic data, and stocks to find positive signs in each. I recommend printing out and sharing this article with all your clients. There has been plenty of bad economic news, as sales professionals our mission must be to bring forward the positive. 

Here are highlights from those three areas: 

The housing bubble:

 "The current recession has broken many of the rules of business cycles, but not this one: when something gets cheap enough, buyers emerge.

America’s housing bubble seems mostly deflated. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city index, house prices through January were down 29% from their all-time peak. Relative to incomes, houses are now 10% undervalued, and relative to rents they are fairly valued, thinks Paul Dales of Capital Economics, a consultancy... "

A variety of financial statistics: 

"In March factory purchasing managers were their least gloomy about new orders since last August. Vehicle sales rose 8% in March from February. New claims for unemployment insurance have stopped rising. Gross domestic product, which shrank at a 6.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, probably shrank at a similar rate in the first, but the composition of the drop was more encouraging; it was driven not by the collapse in consumer spending, but by sinking output as businesses sought to bring inventories into line with lower sales. Second-quarter growth “has a good chance of being positive”, according to Ian Morris and Ryan Wang, economists at HSBC, though “the risks…are still huge.”

The stock market:

"As investors have shifted their economic outlook from catastrophic to merely grim, the stock market has shot higher, by 19% on April 1st from its 12-year low on March 9th. Like houses, stocks look cheap."

Read the entire article, "A faint sound of applause,"from last week's Economist.

Digital Magazines that generate ad revenue

  I’m involved with a project to help build the case for advertising in digital magazines. As part of the proposal process I created a list of digital magazines that are optimized for digital delivery that support advertising sales. It’s quite an amazing list!

If you are trying to sell advertising into a digital edition and getting resistance, show them this PDF. It contains the best list of high profile ad supported digital magazines I could find. Download Digital Magazine Examples 

Also, I’d also appreciate if you know of any other ad supported digital magazines not included here. Please post them.

Here is the list so far: 

US Newsweekly: the digital reincarnation of US News and World Report

MINE: a “made to order” magazine from Time Inc publishing. 84.5% digital and the rest print

Sporting News Today: daily sports news 

SportsArizona: local sports news from Arizona

PC Magazine: now digital only

PopSci Genius from the publisher of Popular Science 

eWeek: has a print version but the digital version is optimized

ZooZoom: digital only fashion form New York

Winding Road: pioneering digital only car magazine

PowerBlock: for car enthusiasts:

Mustang Life: for mustang enthusiasts

Red Wire: music enthusiast digital only

Coachella: music enthusiast digital only

Premier Guitar: a digital replica with enhancements

Viv: very high end women's service magazine

Double Dutch: for teen age girls

Zakar: for Black Women

Hilary: claiming to be North America's First and Most Popular Online Women's Magazine, est. 1995:

Double X: launching in the Spring from Slate.com 

URBiz: for urban business professionals 

Organic Style: green lifestyle magazine

Organic Lifestyle: green lifestyle magazine

 Maria Claire: digital preview edition: 

Reader’s Digest: digital preview edition 

American Girl: digital preview edition 

UK
Avantoure: www.avantoure.com
Computer Weekly: http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1Q49ba8b28a103f012.cde
Cosmetic Surgery Answers: http://www.cosmeticsurgeryanswers.co.uk/magazines/CSA_cosmeticsurgeryanswers.pdf
Drivers Republic (UK): http://magazines.drivers-republic.com/driversrepublic/thetruth030/?fm=2
Eco For You: http://www.ecoyoumagazine.co.uk/
Graduate Prospects: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/p!eLaXi
iMotor (Dennis): http://issue.imotormag.co.uk/car-reviews-car-news-car-videos/1H49996f97e7d29012.cde
iGizmo (Dennis): http://issue.igizmo.co.uk/1U49a41cfa81515012.cde
Monkey (Dennis): http://issue.monkeymag.co.uk/1F49ba50751bd7a012.cde
Nature Methods http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n3/index.html#iniss
Sisters magazine (Muslim women):  http://www.sisters-magazine.com/
The Week (Dennis): http://www.theweek.com/home/toc
Tennis Head: http://cde.cerosmedia.com/tennishead-ezine/1J499185eee9e7b012.cde