Ad Sales Blog

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

To sell more print ads talk digital first

Many media reps who sell both print and on-line media lead their client conversations talking about print. Since it can take as much time to sell a $7,000 print ad as a $1,000 banner ad, this can look like the fastest way to meet quota...or is it?  

I have found the opposite is true. Starting with print can lead to lower print sales. Sound crazy? Here are three reasons why:

 

 

1. Advertisers would rather talk about digital options than talk about print. Digital media is new and more interesting for them. Honestly, what is there to say that is new and exciting about print advertising that can compare?

2. When calling on smaller and mid-sized accounts there is a very real opportunity to be a hero by helping them understand the chaos that is digital media today. Many of the organizations you call on don't have on-staff expertise who keep up with the changing digital marketplace. If you keep up, you can be of real service to them.

3. Finally, digital media is more strategic than print because of the metrics that show up after a campaign. When you can look at the results together, a great detailed conversation can result.

If you focus client time on where their interests are firrst, you will simply have a better conversation and make a better connection which will be more rewarding for both of you.

I find that by talking about digital options first I become far more valuable to my clients, find out more about their needs, and uncover far more opportunities.

When more client understanding, trust, and opportunities are developed far more productive ways to work print into the media budget will present themselves.  

The best way to sell more print advertising is to have client conversations directed by what is most interesting and useful for customers, not commissions. Most often, this means starting your conversation about digital.

 Read my article "Print Magazines Have Never Stopped Selling" from Foilo magazine

 

For publishers, digital dollars are about data not eyeballs

 Are you swapping analogue dollars for digital dimes? 

If you follow the traditional publishing business model in an ever more the digital world it is inevitable. The traditional magazine business model is based on creating content to attract eyeballs, and then to sell exposure (advertising) to them. This basic plan has kept magazine publishers profitable for over a hundred years. But this model faces harsh challenges in today's digital media world.  The problem is a far more efficient way to deliver eyeballs online, called "search." Every marketer knows that they can get far more eyeballs and clicks per dollar for their website buying “search” instead of digital media from traditional publishers. Why every publisher does not know this is a mystery to me. 
 
To understand the problem let's look a look at a rough example with the math:

Say you publish a magazine that charges $6,000 for a page of print advertising which gets $1,000 for a banner on it's website. What if running either a print or newsletter ad gains exposure to many eyeballs and results in 75 click thoughs to an advertiser’s website. Depending on the expense of appropriate keywords, a click through generated by Google, or another search engine, could cost as little as 20 cents or as much as $5. So, Google would charge between $15 to $375 for the same number of clicks you are asking advertisers to pay $1,000 or $5,000 for. Argue all you want about the quality of your clicks. With this big of a price difference it is going to be hard to make it stick. 
 
If you don’t think the online advertisers in your niche are impressed by this math,

IAB online ad revenue for 2011 shows the continued growth of search

think again. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) almost half of all online ad dollars (46.5%) now go to search. A recent analysis of where Google gets its ad dollars shows penetration into niches traditionally held by publishers.       
 
 
 But there is a better way to compete. The core strength of digital media is not in its ability to deliver exposure to eyeballs, but in its ability to deliver interactive experiences. Why sell one way communication (eyeballs) for what is a fundamentally an interactive medium? With this in mind, a new model for publishers is emerging:
 
Use content to build data on potential customers. Use that data to build sponsorable interactive customer experiences.
 
In this contenxt, a piece of data is either the location of an individual (address, phone number, name, company name, e-mail address, zip code, etc.) or information about the individual that explains his or her behavior (buying intentions, current products owned, income, demographics, sex, ethnicity, political orientation, type of car owned, etc.).   
 
What can you do with this kind of data? Let’s look at a that rough magazine example where they are charging $5,000 for print ads and $1,000 for web banners. With the right data, what else could they  sell?          
 
Create targeted sponsored webinars.
Cost of sponsorship $7,500 to $15,000
 
Create live sponsored events. Cost
of live event sponsorships, $5,000 to $15,000
 
Create market research to sell.
Cost of market research, $2,000 to $15,000
 
Create market consulting opportunities.
$7,000 and up
 
Create highly focused direct
marketing based on opt in lists (e-blasts) $2,000 to $4,000
 
These are not digital dimes.

 

Download my white paper on how publishers can profit in a multi-screen world sponsored by Sheridan Press 

 

One in three TV viewers becomes an "On Demander" bypassing traditional viewing

How much traditional TV are people watching? Media Research firm Say Media reports that one out of three people in the US has given up watching live TV for Internet TV and time-shifted video.

Consumers are spending less time with live television and more time with online content as well as time-and-device-shifted premium video content. This group is young, educated and affluent – and are increasingly difficult for marketers to reach through traditional broadcast media.

The researchers identify two groups among those giving up on live TV:

"On Demanders"

• -Watch less live TV than a year ago and more     streamed video content
  -Are young, educated, affluent
  Own 5.4 devices for streaming video
  -Consume 30 hours of video content weekly
  -Are least receptive to TV, online and mobile ads

"Opt Outs"

-Do not watch live TV
Are younger (30% are 18-24), live in urban areas
-Get their video content time and device shifted
-Own 3.9 devices for streaming video
-Are most receptive to mobile and online ads

Most people I know are viewing more online and mobile video, which really did not exist just a few years ago, but the results of this study seem a little extreme. I'm a little suspect of the results...

Say Media, previously Videoegg, is a rich media advertising network that delivering over 100 million uniques in 400 leading video, gaming and social network sites and applications. Clearly they have lot invested in our believing that video TV viewing has moved on to new media platforms.

According to the methodology, findings are based "a passive behavioral analysis via comScore's opt-in panel, of 1,159 Internet users" as well as eight interviews with "Off-the-Grid households" in Chicago and San Francisco." 

While a comScore panel is highly credible source, I believe that someone opting onto one of thier research panels is going to be more advanced in their media consumption that the average user. 

For that reason I'm suspect of the claim that a third of all TV viewers are "off the grid" of traditionl  TV viewing. 

But another findings might be more important that the overall numbers for media sales issues: the qualitative aespects the viewers. Even if comScores panels have more new media enthusiasts than an average sample of Americans, the groups with the panel will likey still maintain their characteristics. 

For me this finding is the most important:

 

Media buyers and sellers take note. Some of the most important TV demograpics are slipping away from traditional TV viewership.  

 

Read more findings from the study at Marketing Profs 

 

Are you in the content delivery business?

  Many print publishing companies are failing  in their transition to digital by giving the wrong answer to the question, "What business are you in?"

  In Theodore Levitt's classic marketing essay, "Marketing Myopia" he describes how the once mighty railroads went bankrupt by failing to understand they were in the transportation business, not the railroad business. Many publishers are making the same mistake, thinking they are in the content delivery business when they are actually now in the customer engagement business.

Like the railroads, many publishers are failing to see how much new technology can transform an industry.

The Internet makes content a commodity. Think that great celebrity interview in your June issue is so unique? Type her name into Goggle followed by the word "interview" and see ten other interviews your readers can instantly access. But your ability to use content to engage and service readers has never been more valuable. The internet may commoditize content, but is also creates a need for knowledgeable guidance though the vast, conflicting, un-moderated content chaos that is the Internet.        

Also, digital media does not just "transmit" content like print media does, digital media transforms it. When content is delivered through digital social media channels the content added by readers can be more important than content generated by editors. How many readers link to an article can have a profound effect on search engines ranking which can make or break the life of a piece of content. Publishers who think their "transition to digital" is about swapping analog transport for digital ignores the importance of interactive reader participation. This came out loud and clear in the recent study, "The Case for Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines" as it documented the core reason marketers advertise in digital magazines is to deliver an interactive brand experience to readers. When value comes from interactivity it is not hard to see why straight digital replicas of print magazines have less value to advertisers.

 It is important to anticipate that digital content will be aggregated, redistributed, rated, commented on, ranked by Goggle, re-purposed, trashed, praised, and ignored as part of the process. All this is very healthily, adds value to the content you create, and is the key to your ability to monetize it. Why? Because it shows that the mere content that you pump out is driving the creation of an online community. If you can show a lot of interactivity between your community members, the value increases. Again, online, most content is a commodity, but when you use it to build a community, you create something of unique value that you can charge for.   

For publishers, the transition from analog to digital can be painful, unfair, and frustrating. At the heart of a successful transition to digital is a reinvention of the business model. Magazine publishers are often initially surprised by  the tiny revenue their digital media generates as they swap $10K print pages for $1K newsletter banners. But those newsletters, operating within a community as data gatherers, can return big profits when leveraged properly. Subscriptions for magazines and newsletters are harder to charge for when they go digital, but free subscriptions operating as content development centers, can be leveraged to create other reader experiences that can be monetized. 

The key to figuring all this out starts with answering the simple question, "What business are you in?" Online, most content is a commodity. If you still think you are in the content business...please, think again.   

 

Profit on the web is about audience not traffic

At the recent Digital Magazine Symposium, Gordon Borell astonished the audience by blowing up the notion that building that largest base of online readers is the key to ad revenue. 

   After surveying the financial results from thousands of local media Web operations for the past eight years Borrell concludes there is no direct correlation between large amounts of traffic and large amounts of money.

For example, Borrell tracked a wedding Web site in one of the top media ten media markets making nearly as much money in Internet advertising (in millions of dollars) as the #1 ranked TV station website in that market. The TV site gets about 600,000 unique visitors per month, the wedding site gets about 60,000, or 1/10th of that traffic. How can this happen?

Borrell says that online, the best advertising is content. There was a time before the Internet (my kids are shocked at this statement) when the top way consumers learned about products was through advertising. But the Internet has become a far more efficient educator. Many of the most profitable websites make money because their content functions like advertising did years ago, as a customer educator for product sales. According to Borrell, visitors of these sites are “leaning forward” to read the content while probably ignoring the banner ads. 

Some print publishers are still trying to win the print circulation/CPM battles online. But that battle is over. They lost. Online, search, which now accounts for over half of all online advertising dollars spent, has won. A media buyer can always buy more clicks per dollar buying search. 

While the online CPM battle is lost, the war for publisher profit can be won. Borrell shows us how with an example: “Compare radio, a $15 billion media segment, with the yellow pages, a $9.8 billion segment. About twice as many people listen to radio compared with those who use the printed yellow pages. So those ad dollars seem just a little out of whack, right?  Now consider this:  For radio, average weekly time spent listening is about 20 hours.  For the yellow pages, it’s about a minute.  An industry that reaches less than half the audience of radio and gets about 60 seconds of quality time with them every week – compared with radio’s 20 hours a week – can still attract about 65% of the ad dollars as radio?  That’s because the yellow pages, like the Internet, are a lean-forward medium where people see the advertising because the advertising is the content."

At the Digital Magazine Symposium, when Borrell laid this out, everyone in the audience was taking furious notes.

To further support Borrell's points, the chart below illustrates the dollar value of a unique visitor at some of the best known websites. To estimate these numbers, Silicon Alley Insider took the full year revenue for 2009 for each of the companies below and divided them by the number of their average monthly worldwide unique visitors.

As per Borrell, the more "wallet ready" the unique visitor is, the more dollars generated. Search gets the most per visitor, then display, and then social. 

Google's uniques (search) are the most valuable: $18 of revenue per monthly unique per year. Facebook's uniques, meanwhile (social networking) are worth a paltry $3.50. Twitter's uniques are worth almost nothing.

Understanding this, publishers, even small ones, can compete. For example, check out HD Camera Guide which attracts  a relatively small but valuable "wallet ready" audience.

Jaffe vs Joel: Should digital marketing or social media run maketing strategy?

Mitch Joel (left) is President of the “traditional” digital advertising agency, Twist Image. Joseph Jaffe (right) is the Chief Interruption Officer of Powered which bills itself as a social media agency. As the two debate over which kind of agency will best serve brands, the issue of how social media fits into the overall marketing plan comes into sharp focus. You can listen to their debate HERE

Throughout the debate Joel describes today's marketing challenge as managing a client's message through a variety of digital channels with social media providing some new ones. “At the end of the day where does the output of all of these social media activities happen to be? They are happening online. They are happening in the digital channel.”

In contrast, Jaffe sees social media as more than a source of new channels, he sees it as a new source of strategy, “This is a different way to market. This is a different way to do business. This is a different set of rules of engagement and terms and conditions and new metrics are going to be required.”

This contrast alone would not be that meaningful if the overall new strategies Jaffe advocates were not so provocative. During the debate Jaffe offered three hypotheses that contrast his vision:

“Three hypotheses; one retention becomes the new acquisition, two customer services becomes not just a but the key strategic device differentiator, and hypothesis number three the real role of social media is retention not acquisition.”

"Retention is the new acquisition?" This is a radical departure from most digital marketing strategy which is based on results, measurably, and ROI. But in a world where most clients can be easily identified  and their loyalty is worth far more than acquiring yet one more customer elsewhere, is Jaffe on to something?

For most companies, Joel’s approach will require fewer adjustments in the marketing plan as social media is simply blended into the existing marketing mix. Jaffe's approach requires a new way to look at the marketing equation.

But ultimately this debate will not be settled on how comfortable clients are made to feel, but  how successful these approaches are. Ultimately, the market will decide as consumers respond more to one or the other. I highly recommend listening to the debate, at the link I posted above, it's great fun. 

My eclectic summary of the great debate:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The revolution in magazines that will be here by June

By June of this year we will be having a very different discussion about interactive magazines. By then, the behind the scenes work going on in several areas will come together enabling the printed magazine to evolve into its inevitable digital form. Soon content publishers, content distribution companies, and hardware technology companies, working on different pieces of the puzzle, will have their pieces on the table. Once connected, a new way to look at magazine content and how it is delivered will emerge and the skeptics of digital magazines will need to reconsider their views.

The activity is everywhere; 

• Apple is quietly working behind the scene's to lineup publishers for rumored digital magazine distribution through iTunes alongside the release of an Apple tablet reader.
•  Hearst just announced an e-reader to support their magazine content at the Consumer Electronics show.
• Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation, and Time Inc. announced a "Hulu for magazines" to distribute their digital magazines.
• At the Consumer Electronics Show, which just ended, e-readers were so prominent some reporters to called it the year of the e-reader.

The pieces are coming together. Let's connect the dots:  

First: what the experience will look like

Two publishers have animated the concept on videos showing what interactive magazines will look like on the next generation of digital readers. The readers are responsive to the users touch, and highly interactive as they intuitively create a dynamic reader experience. The first video shows the anticipated edition of Sports Illustrated with a play by play of what that publication will look like in digital form:

The second is a concept video is from Bonnier Corp, the publisher of Popular Science, and offerers a detailed look at how content for interactive magazines will be created and delivered:

  

Science fiction? Nope. The digital Sports Illustrated edition will be out in June, and as for Popular Science, they have been publishing interactive editions of the PopSci Genius Guide since last year. In addition there are already dozens of interactive magazines published around the world.  What will be different six months from now is that the next generation of digital readers will be making their way into the hands of readers. Which brings us to the next piece of the puzzle... 

Second: the digital readers are coming:

Here is a video report from the recent Consumer Electronics Show where a wide variety of notebook computers with specialized e-reader features, as well as dedicated e-readers were shown. In this video Associate Press reporter Haven Daley predicts that 6 million notebook computer and e-readers will be sold in the US this year.

Third, digital distribution technology is moving ahead.

Several digital magazine service companies are not waiting for the digital readers, they have launched applications to deliver a magazine reading experience to smart phones that are available now. Look at these three videos:  

Zinio's CEO Rich Maggiotto explains how his organization's iPhone app delivers both a high end graphical experience and readability to a small screen:

Nxtbook Media's Marketing Director Marcus Grimm shows how his organization's smart phone app creates ad revenue opportunities for publishers:

Finally, a demonstration of Texterity's iPhone version of Elite Traveler magazine:

Magazine content, e-reader hardware, and distribution technology are all coming together. When the three are finally in place be prepared to rethink everything you know about magazines. 

"We have met the media and he is us"

News Years eve in downtown London. They put on a great fireworks show centered around the "London Eye," a gigantic ferris wheel attraction. On New Years Eve they turn the London Eye into one big fireworks launcher and put on a great show. 

As I watched the fireworks display I could not help notice that the event was being covered in a way that would have been unheard of 10 years ago.

Look at the bottom of the picture and see the hundreds of digital cameras and cell phone cameras snapping away. New media is personal media.

 This event was recorded by thousands of personal journalists each hoping to capture a tiny piece of the event. In the hours of waiting before the display I saw ONE cameraman from the BBC. Who had the best coverage? One BBC camera against tens of thousands of personal cameras. Wonder where content for the new social media platforms will come from? Look at this picture. Part of the new media is us!  

If you had seen the "media correction" of 2009 coming what would it have looked like?

If you were in media sales for print media,television, or radio 2009 was a miserable year. What would it have looked like if you could have predicted it? It might have looked like the following blog post. Based on events that had just happened in the financial industry my June 22, 2007 blog post, describes the "inevitable correction" that ad based media will be going through. It looks like the end of 2009 to me! 

Here's the post:   

A recent "follow the money" analysis of the advertising industry by Dow Jones' "MarketWatch" should serve as a shrill wake up call to anyone in the ad sales business who thinks that online products will not be the biggest part of their portfolio in the future. I also see this article as a great sales tool to show any advertiser who feels the same.

The article looks at the recent spate of acquisitions among online ad giants with eye popping billion (with a "B") dollar signs; Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, Microsoft buys aQuantive--for $6 billion, etc. MarketWatch concludes, they make perfect sense because of the "inevitable correction" coming to the ad industry as a whole.

MarketWatch lays out the case:
"Last year, U.S. consumers spent nearly a third of their total media-consumption time engaged with online or interactive media, a dramatic increase from just two or three years ago. At the same time, Fortune 500 companies allocated only 6 percent of their marketing budgets to online media in 2006, up from 5 percent in 2005...they're spending ever more money where, increasingly, consumers aren't."

The prediction:
"The inevitable correction is upon us. That's why online adverting in the U.S. market is growing seven times faster than other advertising media: Online was up 35% year over year, while the overall ad market grew only 4 percent. Whether dollar allocation percentages ever match consumer usage numbers is academic; it's clear that the gap between consumer behavior and corporate marketing budgets must close."

If it's anxiety producing to hear financial types apply the word "correction" to the industry where you currently earn a living, take heart. Now that you know what is "inevitable" you can take advantage.

Read the full article on MarketWatch