Ad Sales Blog

Do your media reps ask about paid search?

If your sales staff sells traditional media, understanding how paid search works is a big plus. Today, about half of all online ad dollars go to search, so it is important to understand where most of online money now goes.

The first step is for media reps is to ask clients how much of their ad budget goes to search. Many are surprised at how much of the marketing plan goes to an advertising form that started in its current form only 12 years ago, as 2000 was the year Google first started selling advertising based on keywords.

The year search really broke out was 2008. In that year Google indexed a trillion web pages, but more importantly, acquired web analytics giant DoubleClick enabling them to, "dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurably and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies."

Leveraging the resources of DoubleClick, Google was able to improve the metrics for advertisers and offer "more precise metrics in order to judge the effectiveness of their campaigns." With improved metrics came better documentation of the effectiveness of search and and improved sales.      

The year 2008 was also the year B2B print advertising, a medium challenged with documenting results, started to falter. Coincidence? Hard to say.

But lets look at the present. A recent study of B2B marketers from Marketing Sherpa showed budget allocation for paid search is now ahead of print advertising, no small feat for a medium whose ads often cost between 30 cents and five dollars each. Think traditional media does not compete against search for ad dollars? Think again.  

Do your media reps know how to position their prodcuts against paid search? It would be best if they could.      

 

Learn how we train media sales people

 

Nine years from now what will break the desk?

Nine years ago I was working for a print trade magazine so full of ads that when we put the issues we had in our trade show booth reception desk, the weight of them broke it. Those magazines were packed with ads. Today, trade show reception desks are largely safe from this danger. Two questions:

First, what does it take to break the desk today?

Second, considering how much has changed since I took these pictures, what will things be like    nine years from now?

Your thoughts?

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS, I took these pictures of issues of Broadcast Engineering magazine at the 2003 National Association of Broadcasters show.  

Angie, on why Angie’s List publishes a print magazine

Angie Hicks Bowman, co-founder of the home service rating company that carries her name, is one of the smartest marketers I have ever interviewed. She started her company as "Columbus Neighbors," personally going door to door in Columbus, Ohio to sign up members and collect ratings on local contractors. After her first year of door knocking, her company had 1,000 members. Today, that number is over 1.5 million paid members.

When my wife Lynn became an Angie’s List member, a monthly print magazine started showing up at our Brooklyn brownstone. I was intrigued. In a time when many marketers are scaling back print magazine marketing investment to favor digital media, here was a prominent digital content company publishing a print magazine. Retro marketing? Not on your life. In an interview with Angie I found her rationale for using print magazines so rooted in common sense I wondered why no one had thought of explaining it her way before.

When I asked Angie why she is sticking with print magazines she said, “I think people interact with print publications differently than they do with online content. Angie’s List is essentially a problem solving service. When people say, “Oh, I need a plumber” they come to us. But our print magazine allows us to interact with members when they are not in need of a plumber.” Angie added that her magazine helps differentiate her company in the crowded online market: “It’s one of the neat differentiators about us. We are not only collecting all of this content but actually packaging it into this kind of “news you can use format.”

In addition, Angie said her print magazine helps drive incremental activity by educating members: “Maybe someone had not thought about buying a geo thermal heating and cooling system, but read an article about it in Angie’s List magazine. That person may not have gone on our website to read the article but read it in our magazine, and it created incremental interest.” The magazine also serves as a way to introduce new members, said Angie. “Angie’s List members are busy people, and getting the magazine delivered to them can be a very easy, great way to kind of break in.” She continues, “I get tons of e-mails but on Saturday I might sit down to read a magazine at home, where I don’t want to be sitting in front of my computer. Our members are very passionate about our magazine and a lot of consumers leave it sitting out on their coffee table.” And members love the magazine. Angie recalls, “I remember getting a call from a member who had a hospital stay during which her daughter came in, cleaned her house, and threw away her Angie’s List magazine collection. She was so upset she called and asked if we could send her a whole new set.”

For those of us marketing print products in an ever more digital world, for my money, Angie’s best wisdom came when she described how magazines keep her customers engaged even “when they are not in need of a plumber.” As more marketers abandon print budgets to fund digital initiatives, her comment reminds us of print’s unique marketing value, which is not easily duplicated online. When a print magazine arrives in a home or office it can be read in any physical location, and does not compete for online time with other websites.

In addition, website content is often “purpose driven” -- designed for users to choose their own sequence of information as they search for content and solutions to problems. The magazine experience is different, because an editor selects the sequence of content within an area of interest. The magazine read may offer fewer content options, but sometimes it’s really nice to have someone who really knows the neighborhood be the tour guide. Like many websites, Angie’s List is a problem solving service, so a print magazine is the perfect complement.

Need a book? Go to Amazon.com. The latest political news? Politio.com. Tech news? Mashable.com etc. But what about when you do not need a book, political news, tech news, or a plumber? Maybe you are sitting on your couch just reading a magazine, maybe the one published by Angie’s List.

PS: Watch a video produced by American Business Media on our initiative to help publishers sell more print adverising by selling the value of 3rd party media HERE

The Newspaper extinction timeline

Whether you agree or not with the premise of this timeline, the very fact that someone has assembled one should give all in the print media world alarm. The charts creators do not seem like bomb throwing heretics. They calmly explain,

"This schedule for newspaper extinction shows best estimates given current trends. The timeline is intended to highlight the diversity of global media markets and stimulate useful strategic conversations.

Newspapers in their current form becoming insignificant is not the same as the death of news-on-paper, which will continue in a variety of forms. Ways that newspaper publishers of today will succeed in the transition beyond newspapers in their current form” include transitioning to other channels, providing personalized news-on-paper, and tapping niche markets."

Sounds sane enough. Best advice to newspaper people? Change with the times or move to Argentina, where print newspapers are forecast to exist until until 2039.  

Download the whole chart and study

 

FREE "Print is Alive!" download

Having a tough time with print media sales? Here is some help. I've been blogging about the viability of print advertising for years now. I've compiled a compendium of 27 posts into a 36 page PDF for free download. Here is the table of contents. Click on the link below to download:

1. Print magazines have never stopped selling pg.32. The future of print magazines: fewer, but just fine pg. 5
3. How print ads help generate web leads pg.7
4. Age of magazine readers rise, but slightly pg.8
5. Print sales tip from a Nielsen analyst: let's get physical pg.9
6. Beating "print is dead" with Ron Wall's iPod story pg. 10
7. Magazines: most credible source of "information about a company" pg.11
8. Young Americans: business magazines #1,Wikipedia #2 pg. 12
9. Push vs. Pull pg. 13
10. Docs prefer print! pg. 15
11. Recommend a URL in the next ad pg.16
12. Magazines are top source of readership trust pg.17
13. Magazines are a topWeb driver pg.18
14. Pushing paper advertising in Sweden pg.19
15. B-to-B digital revenue to top print by 2009 pg. 20
16. The magazine Engagement story pg.21
17. Study: magazines lift brand favorability and purchase intent best pg.23
18. Magazines drive buying intent... more than TV! pg.24
19. Just because you're "hot" doesn't mean people trust you pg.25
20. Repositioning print pg.26
21. Magazine and search synergy pg.28
22. Who still reads magazines? Everybody pg.31
23. Are newspapers old or new media? Yes. pg.32
24. Repositioning the magazine medium pg.33
25. Need a new ad business model? Think like Rupert pg.34
26. Selling print in a digital world: talk about "intent" pg.35
27. Selling print in a digital world: use "perspective" pg.36

Download Print is Alive! for FREE

Print magazines have never stopped selling

  At the just concluded Folio show Kerry Smith, Red7Media CEO, offered a surprising view of what the future of print publishing might be. Challenged, like all publishing companies, with the decline of print ad revenue, Smith has diversified his organization's offerings to include marketing services such as research, and consulting. But even as less of his company's revenue is tied to print he is more committed to it. Why? Because he has found that his magazines are most often the the first point of contact leading to the sale of all the other services he is now selling.  

Today, publishers of all kinds are using the presence they have in their markets to start related businesses. For example: 

• Premier Guitar, sells sheet music to subscribers
• Oil and Gas Journal sells industry data and research
• Dwell, a shelter book for the modern home, sells modern prefabricated homes

But this "new" tend where publishers use a magazine presence to sell products and services to readers is not so new. Marketers have used sponsored or branded magazines to do this for years. Despite the migration of ad dollars away from print magazines, the dollars flowing into sponsored magazines are going strong as documented early this year by The Financial Times: 

"According to the UK research body Mintel, this type of “customer publishing” is booming. It estimates that the industry in the UK alone is likely to be worth £1bn by 2013. Between 2008 and 2009 it grew 16 per cent, and by 2013 it is projected to increase by a further 22 per cent – no mean feat when the rest of the glossy magazine world is in the doldrums.

What attracts companies is the direct impact on consumers. “Our research has shown that these magazines create an eight per cent uptick in sales,” says Julia Hutchison, chief operating officer of the Association of Publishing Agencies, the representative for the customer publishing industry in the UK. “On average, every customer spends 25 minutes reading these titles. That’s 25 minutes spent with the brand. Lots of companies are redirecting their ad and marketing spends to this avenue.”

In the past, some sponsored publications were little more than product promos. But now, savvy marketers are investing in quality writers, photographers, and more objective journalism to attract larger audiences. The FT article continues:

"Whereas in-house magazines used to be glorified advertorials, today the branding is much more subtle and there’s a genuine effort to tap top editorial talents and introduce original material; Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, photographic stalwarts of the fashion publications Vogue and Visionaire, shot the latest YSL manifesto.

The investment makes sense: it gives depth to a brand in an environment they can control. It pushes product without the obvious “sell”, and in many instances may be cheaper than advertising.Asos’ title, for instance, which is known for its mix of celebrity, shopping and entertainment, is now the second largest women’s fashion title in the UK with an annual circulation of 471,522.

Terri Westlake, head of media at Asos.com, says, “Customers are savvy; they understand that it’s a brand title (and not independent), but they still appreciate a very good free magazine.”

Print magazines can provide marketers with a "media marquee" that gives them consistent visibility hard to duplicate in the crowed online world. What Kerry Smith, and a growing number of publishers are taking advantage of is the same benefit marketers using sponsored publications have used for years...print magazines sell!

Read the Whole article in FT

   

The future of print magazines: fewer, but just fine.

Print magazines will be around for many years, but they will be lot fewer in number. Why do I say this? Because as part of the study, “The Case for Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines,” I measured the percentage of print magazine and website users who were “very actively involved” in their media. When I tabulated this against the age of the respondents, I found that younger respondents were less often heavy print magazine users. I found the opposite for heavy users of websites.

Why measure seriously involved media users? Because most often they determine the future of any media. If the most active users of Facebook started leaving where would Facebook be? Looking more like MySpace.

Print magazines readers skew older. The number of respondents who subscribe to more than

 

six print magazines increases steadily with every 10 years added to a respondent’s age. Almost half (47.6%) of the sample over the age of 70 subscribe to more than six print magazines. But with each 10-year decline in respondent age group, the number of serious magazine readers drops consistently.

For respondents under the age of 20, only about one in five (21.5%) subscribe to more than six print publications. Assuming readers maintain their reading habits as they age, there will be less demand for print magazines in the future.

But print magazines will not disappear. One in five (21.5%) under the age of 20 still subscribe to more than 6 magazines. While that is less than half the number for those over 70 who do so, it is still a very significant base. Print magazines are not dead, nor will they die. The difficult transition we are in now is a question of oversupply, not ineffectiveness. When magazines get though this transition there will be fewer of them but they will be robust once again.   

Information on “The Case for Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines” can be found HERE. The chart above combines findings #16 and 17 from the study. The study was sponsored by VIVmag and Nxtbook Media.  

Hyperlocal without the hype

This video make me shudder and think. As Local Media Guru Gordon Borrell interviews BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis all the scary things we suspect about the future of local media check out. Local newspapers not changing fast enough to survive? Check. Local news without local newspapers? Check. But Jarvis is OK with  this. Why? Because journalism will survive. His model for how this will happen is fascinating. This video is worth your time watching:   

PS: I'm very proud that Gordon Borrell will be joining me at the Digital Magazine Symposium I'll be chairing on March 9th in New York City. I've been following him a long time. Few have the kind of insight he has.  

 

How print ads help generate web leads

Let’s talk about yellow page advertising. Here’s a form of advertising designed to elicit a response. Telmetrics, an advertising call tracking company released data earlier this month demonstrating the power of a unique URL as part of a print ad.

Telmetrics measured how many solid sales leads came from yellow page ads and compared how many came from a reader picking up the phone, versus reading a URL on the ad and responding online. 

Company president Bill Dinan made the assumption that most survey respondents would say they picked up the phone to engage the advertiser. He was correct, but surprised at how close it was when only 56% of leads came in via phone calls, and 44% came through a direct response of the URL printed on the ad. The study also discovered that unique URLs like  CallFlorists2.com were more often visited than client specific domains with URL extensions like Publisher.com/florists. If you want your print ad to generate a response keep the URL in the ad and keep it unique and simple.

Read the Telmetrics report

Age of magazine readers rise, but slightly

  Between 2001 and 2009 the median age of readers of consumer magazines rose by only 3%. This was reported last week by Media Post which crunched numbers from over 90 leading  consumer publications.  

How important is this?

I think it is a great cliche buster. I have worked with many publishers who have measured the age of their online readers and compared them to the age of their print readers. Most expected a big swing for the younger readers to online. Most were surprised. About 2/3 reported no difference in age, a third showed a slightly younger audience for online.

The cliche aged print reader and the cliche online teen reader are both just that, cliches. When measurements are applied, there is a slight shift, but not a big one. Young and older readers both like magazines and online media. 

On a call you can use this study to show how print is not such an old person's media after all.

Read the original study on Media Daily News