Adam reports that the Globe, in its ongoing effort to stave off financial ruin, has assembled a “‘New Revenue Team’ whose job it is to develop revenue-generating ideas into marketable products and services that will have a significant return.” There is also a “commission” system of sorts:
All employees are welcome to submit ideas for generating revenue, and the team has developed an incentive plan that pays out an increasing amount as an idea moves through the successive phases of development.
Excellent idea, says I to myself. Maybe we should try something similar! As you may have noticed, there is not exactly a flood of ads gracing our site right now, which means that our march toward world domination effort to improve the BMG experience for our readers has inevitably slowed.
So here’s the plan! We sell advertising through Blogads, as do many other blogs. The rates are pretty low: $150 a week for the “premium” spot in the upper right-hand corner of the screen; $75 a week for the regular spot a little ways down the right-hand sidebar. (That translates roughly to $4 CPM and $2 CPM, for the advertising geeks among you.) I think local businesses should be interested in advertising here (we do get about 100,000 unique readers a month, after all), but we haven’t been very successful in reaching them.
Here’s where you come in. If you refer someone to us who then buys an ad on BMG through Blogads, we’ll pay you 15% of the cost of the ad. Simple as that. So if you persuade someone to buy a $150 ad in our “premium” spot, that’s $22.50 in your pocket. (Note, by the way, that we’ll actually be paying you a little over 20% of what we make from the ad, since Blogads keeps 30% of the price.) It’s a win-win: we get more advertisers; you make some easy money.
And there’s one more thing you can do (though we can’t pay you for it): when you see an ad here that looks remotely interesting, click through to learn more. We don’t get paid by the click, but advertisers nonetheless like to see that their ads are generating interest.
Let us know what you think.
How about I save you 30% (no charge) and point you to openx, – http://www.openx.com. They have an ad platform that they can host for you, it’s easy to configure, solid and free!
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p>Reform before revenue!!!!!!!!
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is that there’s no one to find you the ads. I don’t think most bloggers are doing their own ad sales most of the time – there are people who just go to blogads and that gives progressive blogs business.
The post above would suggest evidence to the contrary. It seems blogads are not doing such a great job selling the ads.
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p>If they want to bring more money in they need to sell directly. Blog ads is probably using someone else to help them get their ads. There are a lot of hands in the ad revenue pie.
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p>I would be surprised if BMG is getting more than 40% of what someone is actually paying for the ad if they don’t sell direct.
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p>They can do blog ads and openx or some other platform at the same time.
that Blogads does sell direct. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.
I went to openx.com. It redirected to openx.org, which is a blank page. ???
it just worked for me.
100,000 hits a week easily beats out local town papers, yet to get even an 1/8 of a page for one week’s edition costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars – and I’m talking the rinky dink town papers. I just think there’s too many businesses that aren’t used to internet ads & never thought of it. Furthermore, since internet sites like BMG have readers that are so spread out, it’s tough to get small local businesses interested in purchasing ads on a site. But why why larger businesses wouldn’t advertise online at a site like BMG is beyond me. They’re losing valuable space, just because they don’t understand the market and don’t read the blogs. We should be seeing Coca-Cola, Huggies and ads for Northeastern on BMG, instead of (just) random authors or some liberal cause. Seems very silly to me that these companies don’t realize the revenue potential they’re missing. Ad people should start really getting behind the internet – it’s rock-bottom cheap now and will be for a while.
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p>I also hate the concept of click-based ads online. Macy’s doesn’t pay the Globe based on who brings in a newspaper coupon. Internet ad companies need to resoundingly just stop accepting that sort of thing and move toward a more traditional concept of ads, where you pay for the space. I know that doesn’t apply as much here, but it does for many in the blogosphere.
This is a balance and I haven’t thought this through yet, but…
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p>BMG is too wide a net for a truly local business. A restaurant might post an ad, but perhaps only want folks inside 128. The MassMOCA museum might post an ad, but only for folks west of Springfield.
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p>When somebody on the Internet requests to see a page from your server, you get their IP address — and usually learn quite a bit about where that user is, often to within their city/town or the one adjacent.
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p>Using that information to serve up ads which were more local would be ab-fab. Of course, if you could divide the state into five regions, you could divide the price by 3 and make more money. National ads could go in the slots where no local ad was sold and be charged the (divide by 5) rate in each region since they didn’t request the target. At worst, you sell the national ad and make the same. Every local ad you sell brings in a little more money and… may get some of us who use adBlock to turn the filter off because the advertisements would be for something far more relevant and interesting.
Interesting idea, but one that would require some fairly fancy programming. I don’t have the technical know-how to control which ads show up depending on the user’s IP address. Any volunteers? đŸ˜‰
that this is the “next step” in all Internet ads, and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened with anything other than Adult Friend Finder.
Most ad networks already do it, including Google, Yahoo etc…
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p>That functionality is built into openx. The problem is that looking up by IP is not terribly accurate and the inventory for delivering the ads isn’t there (it’s difficult to sell to local businesses – lot of time and effort for little return unless you can piggy back on top of a sales force that is already in those businesses.)
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p>Now on mobile phones you can get a persons location down to the street/house… That is where it’s at – and what I’m doing… Geocade…
That kind of tracking functionality is already provided by the big ad networks. They may not know exactly where you live, but they know something arguably more valuable: what sites you visit. That’s because many sites use the same ad networks, and a cookie in your browser tracks you across all the sites that serve their ads (for example, every site that serves a Google ad) — from, say, the NYT to blog X to God knows where. So from the ad buyer’s perspective, they can target quite precisely and, more to the point, adjust their targeting based on what works.
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p>As to Ryan’s point, I’m sympathetic to that argument, but I’d argue that the trackability of internet ads is what gives them their long-term competitive advantage over newspaper ads. The shift from print to the web is well under way. It may not be complete yet, as Ryan notes, but would you rather have a newspaper or a website at this point, looking ahead.
they’re all state or national based.
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p>My argument isn’t that datamining interests isn’t valuable… of course it is.
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p>But, if you can figure out I like liberal politics and indie movie theaters, then my blogads ought to be something hipster like some cool fusion restaurant or club or comic book music store or something. The local whatever. That
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p>Facebook is doing this fairly well because they’ve got great geographic data. They’ll get better at it when they figure out how to tap local businesses.
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p>National/Internet ads don’t interest me and they don’t interest most others… that’s why adblock and TiVo 30 sec fast forward exist, and why more and more people are watching television via DVD.
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p>My hypothesis is that I wouldn’t mind ads that were relevant to me. That means an advertisement for a local indie movie or Thai restaurant or political speech within 5 miles or something. It’s different for everyone, but anything local is automatically somewhat relevant. Mix location with interest and you’ve got relevant ads.
If you’re looking to make a profit, I wouldn’t suggest it, but I’ve been a member of the BMG community long enough to make a contribution. You could have levels of members and post them somewhere, though I don’t care so much about that last part.
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p>This is the NPR/PBS model. It wouldn’t be a pay to post model, just putting your money where your mouth is so to speak.
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p>You should also directly contact the DSC and ask them to purchase an ad. You could ask the RSC for that matter. Any issue-oriented group might cough up some revenue. As long as they know you won’t change coverage or censor to preserve revenue, you could get the gambling lobby to post an ad I’m sure. Some direct sales could go a long way.
and as a consequence has lost 50% of its readership and in light of the dwindling advertising dollars, I’d like to predict that by September 2009, the Globe and perhaps the NYT will be history.
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p>This is not to preclude a 20 billion freebie by the current presidential administration to bolster their cheering section.
Way to go Jim. When the bailout money is gone they can either get more taxpayer money ot then they can go under.
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p>Pity that no one no longer prints the news.
and for a big enough donation, Bob will agree to stop singing.
What are the operating costs of this site, in a nutshell? I’m not looking for figures, but I’m having a hard time coming up with anything the editors would have to pay for besides hosting fees.
costs very little to run. That’s not the issue. Going to Denver for the 08 convention, as one example, was quite expensive — just getting there required much of our ad revenue for the year, and that still meant that the three of us were packed into a small apartment with only one bed; we rotated nights for the bed, with the other two on the floor. Couldn’t afford hotel rooms. Didn’t get a lot of sleep those four days.
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p>And then there are the thousands of hours that we’ve collectively put in on this site. Maybe that’s not worth anything to you….
(half serious question)
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p>As for the thousands of hours… that will always be a labor of love my friend. Besides, I suspect that you three keep at this for another few years, and you’ll land a high priced consultant gig.
I didn’t think about Denver. When I read your rotating bed scheme the first thought I had was that you were channeling Deval Patrick:) I didn’t know if you considered this a volunteer or paid gig.
The times is creating local blogs
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p>Local Ads? From the editor for digital initiatives at The New York Times