Newspaper publishers have always been looking for a clear and concise way to show value in a customers print display advertising, but with no easily trackable statistics, the value proposition always ran the risk of coming into debate.  This is why so many who understood banner advertising were either scared or delighted with the mediums acceptance, because through online advertising an ad and its related user action could now be clearly measured.  For the most part, showing and advertiser how many impressions their ad received and or click-through’s sufficed and this has been the case for the past 10 years.  Now however, publishers are coming up against more web savvy customers or agencies, who are demanding more value for their online advertising spend.  It is because of the ever evolving advertiser mindset and dollar, why we suggest that publishers start to ask more questions of their advertisers willingness to share their current web analytics, to aid in gauging an online campaigns awareness impact, as a part of the committed ROI.  What we mean by ‘awareness impact’ is finding a way to measure those customers who would have seen an ad, but did an independent search on the product/organization/brand before calling or taking any action to purchase. Excerpts of an article we found by Augustine Fou provides tips for publishers when looking to better measure the total affect of an advertisers online campaign.  Fou’s tips may not work for smaller businesses who are just now building their online presence, but it would work for most.  What’s also important to note is that Fou’s tips prove the importance of deeper relationships with our advertisers, given the type of information you’ll need to ask for.

Tips for Running Awareness Campaigns to Calculate ROI

• Ensure that online destinations are set up prior to launching paid awareness campaigns. So when people go online to search and do research after being inspired by the awareness campaign, they will find you and the specific information they are looking for.
• Use made-up words when possible, so lift in search is detectable. Brand names that are also generic words like axe, tag, open, etc. will not be detectable about the noise of unrelated searches containing the same word.
• Search-engine optimize your site and online assets, so specific information can be found and is mapped specifically to the “missing link” the potential customer is trying to solve.
• Have detailed analytics in place to measure the “conversion funnel” that can end in a sale or another action and is a known proxy for sales (e.g. advertiser knows X percent of coupons printed online get redeemed with a purchase offline.)

Source: Augustine Fou, April 2009

Depending on where you are located in North America, you are more than likely seeing the real estate market turn around for the better.  This change of heart for potential home buyers bodes well for publishers, and related services, outside of the obvious realtor’s and brokerages.  Moreover, categorical review of newspaper print and online revenues in the Real Estate category, show marginal increases over last year this time, proving that those who make a living in the real estate sector, are indeed spending on advertising.

Canada Housing Starts

US Housing Starts

Unlike the mirrored real estate industry makeup in Canada year after year, the US market is lending a need for publishers to approach it differently.  Up until now, many real estate advertising properties have used foreclosures and its newness to try to keep the category afloat. Newly released research from Trulia and RealtyTrac however, shows that there appears to be a more negative stigma applied to buying a foreclosed home in 2010, as opposed to last year.  The general foreclosure negativity can be attributed to a few things the research says; potential home buyers feel that the process is too risky;  they have a fear of the home losing value quickly; and most of all there is a fear of hidden costs.

Regardless of buyer feedback on foreclosures, the fact of the matter is that housing starts and sell through rates are up, which in turn calls for opportunity for advertisers.  For publishers, this is exciting news, but the market turn around is happening at a time when realtors are recognizing that there are other ways of getting the word out, aside from newsprint and standard real estate listing sites.   Publishers will have to think about complimentary offers, services and tool sets that answer the true business needs of those in the real estate industry.

Gone are the days of sourcing old newspaper content through microfilm, as the British Library announces that it plans to digitize 40 million pages of archived newspaper content, over the next 10 years.

Although many think newspapers, in their current format, are becoming somewhat dated, there is a lot to be said for historical life announcement articles (deaths, births, weddings, etc…), as well as historic milestones for historians.

The project will focus on events such as the Boer War and the Crimean War, and is being funded by Brightsolid.

“Because a story isn’t just a single, static text document anymore. It has to be something that lives.” This is a quote from Craig Silverman, one of three founders of Toronto’s new local news site, OpenFile, made up of collaborative pieces from resident bloggers and online journalist.

In the air of Patch.org and news publishers taking notice to how individual citizens are taking holistic online news reporting, void of paywalls, into their own hands, Toronto now sees OpenFile appear, a similar pseudo ‘for the people by the people’ news site.  OpenFile’s purely digital approach to providing the news is followed through by its clean design and use of multi-media.

The idea around the name OpenFile is that each subject is treated as a file and contributors, even lay folk like you and I, are encouraged to add commentary, video and or pertinent links to files, building a complete and grass roots story around all topics. The groups earlier blog post about the governing principles of OpenFile, sums up what we can expect quite nicely.

1. Local first: Readers should determine what “local” means to them. Local could mean a street, a block, a neighbourhood, the whole city, or any combination of these.
2. Always collaborate: The line between journalist and reader should be fluid. Apart from gate-keeping and quality control, we must be responsive to our readers. Our technology choices should be democratic, collaborative and pragmatic.
3. Keep tools handy: Journalists and contributing members should have easy access to a variety of easy-to-use tools with which to report, record and submit ideas.
4. Stay open: The news loop must stay open to new input. Stories evolve forever.
5. Be useful: News-gathering is a public good. We must listen to our community’s needs rather than setting its needs.
6. Curate the conversation: Shift the role of the journalist from fact-gatherer to news producer. We will shape and direct stories in concert with our readers.

OpenFile creators are Wilf Dinnick (founding editor and CEO), Kathy Vey (editor-in-chief), and Craig Silverman (digital journalism director).  The site went live just yesterday, with about seven files and it is still in beta form.  The only questionable part to OpenFile’s business model is the detail around how they determine if a lay users ‘file’ suggestion is worthy of an article.  You see, readers, if the subject so dear to them has not been published to the site as a file, can send in a file suggestion or tip.  OpenFile editors then review the suggestions to vet which ones have merit and warrant a reporter to write a piece on that readers suggestion.  OpenFile needs to be careful to not fall prey to what some newspapers have adopted, which is something we call selective reporting, based on publisher or board political views. Biased news is no news at all.  How can they be sure their editors will practice with an open approach.

Take a look at OpenFile and let us know what you think.  Should Toronto based traditional journalism be concerned?

Paul Godfrey & Wall Street – What will they do with Canwest media properties?

Posted by Beverly Crandon on 5/11/10 • Categorized as Acquisitions, Magazines, Newspapers, Print Media, Publishers

The publishing industry has been ladened with today’s news about the Canwest sale to unsecured investors, led by Paul Godfrey (National Post CEO). Godfrey led the group of investors (JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley) that bought the debt ridden newspaper group for $1.1 billion.  From what we’ve gathered, the group is standing behind the statement that they will recoup their moneys by increased ad sales and by taking the company public on the TSX, as soon as this summer.

Although Godfrey states that newspapers will remain to be a heavy focus for the new owners, we believe the group will soon start to sell off some of the newspaper titles and keep only the assets that show a long-term benefit. Canwest is made up of several traditional community newspapers in markets with heavy competition and our thoughts are that they will look to sell them, close them or digitize the products to lessen costs. The publishing group does posses solid daily publications that, in most cases, are the dominant player in their markets and we suspect that they will keep these properties for some time, but the strategy and where they invest their dollars around them will change. The business focus will move heavily to online and this will mean a transition in staffing and talent.

The one Canwest print property that we believe will shine brighter than the rest is the National Post and to some extent the Financial Post magazine. As leading financial news sources in Canada, their specialized content opens up Godfrey’s group to many niche digital and mobile opportunities. The publisher would however, have to work on their digital presence, as their current set up that they expect readers to pay for, is somewhat dated.

Aside from the powerful dailies and financial papers, Canwest does have a group of healthy broadcasting properties, which has also been an attractive asset to its suitors.

Regardless of Godfrey’s plan, the unsecured investors are from the financial industry and are well versed in restructuring, in the light of debt recovery.  For their business stragety ability, amongst many other positives, Godfrey’s group was the better choice for Canwest debtors, as the secondary choice, Torstar Corporation backed by Fairfax, was only prepared to pay 800 million dollars, as anything more would have meant carrying more debt than Torstar could afford.

Canwest is the second and more sizable newspaper investment for JP Morgan, with their first being $400 million in Gannett, making others in the newspaper industry feel at ease as JP Morgan’s leap of faith in the industry shows the  uplifts that publishers have experienced in the first part of 2010 and end of 2009, may in fact be sustainable.

It seems I can’t hold a conversation with a journalist or head to a newspaper related conference, where the comparison of blogs versus content produced by newspapers, isn’t raised. Many publishers and those in the industry, feel that their news related content and editorial gives them a leg up on the other sources of news found online, due to a parvenu notion surrounding the quality of their content. The primary complaints about blogs, given by newspaper personnel, are that they are poorly written, filled with personal bias and created by people who are not knowledgeable and as a result, may not share all of the facts with readers. I tend to disagree with those that feel blogs are not a good source of news and information, as I can argue the very same things that bloggers are accused of ill producing, can be found in newspaper editorial.

Just last week I read up on a pending issue that arose from an editorial piece ran in the Hamilton Spectator. The editorial was about protests that represent concerns related to minorities and smaller (based on North American comparisons) religious groups. The journalist held the argument that police and law enforcement do not act accordingly to temper these types of protests, because they are conducted by minorities.  The journalist also added that there was an overwhelming fear amongst law enforcement that acting would deem them racist in the eyes of the public.   As the Spectator is a popular newspaper, read by approximately 260,000 people daily, the article was undoubtedly seen by a reader who took offense and reported their concerns to the Ontario Press Council. A year later, today, the Council stated that while they found the editorial piece “insensitive” the newspaper was not in violation. In this instance we see an individual, no doubt employed by the newspaper, injecting their personal thoughts into a news related piece and expressing their opinion and on a situation. This is no different from a blogger applying their thoughts on a news related topic. The jury is also still out on the level of knowledge this newspaper employed writer had on race relations, law enforcement and protest management, but their piece was yet still deemed good literature and published in a daily newspaper.

What many fail to realize is that many bloggers are actually industry experts in the area they blog about. They’ve either spent years working in a related vertical, have written several books or white papers, and or have publicly addressed large groups at conferences, all surrounding their related blog topics. I argue that based on their experience, there would be no one better suited to add commentary to news and information made public. I would go so far as to say that bloggers, in many ways, provide a service, as they add perspective to the news and information we are served and extend themselves to talk about the items we hold interest in, but depending on the political stance or nature, newspapers and newspaper sites, may not cover. According to Journalism.org, in the 47 weeks in 2009, where they studied blogs and newspaper written pieces, blogs and the mainstream press shared the top story just 13 times, proving that there is a need for bloggers and the content they contribute, to allow for broadened information consumption on the Web.

Blogs are not the enemy of newspapers, in obvious ways, they should instead be deemed a content source for publishers. After all, the ability to monetize the web comes to those who master the content game.  We see a successful marriage here, as by no means are we discounting the level of content produced by newspaper journalists. I am aware of specific newspaper journalists who have amassed large followings, because of that quality.  What we are saying is that no one should consider newspaper journalist content the be all and end all, instead the ideal mix for a publisher is to couple their content, with reputable blog content posted by active bloggers.  This concept isn’t far off from the citizen journalist pattern many publishers have adopted, but what this will do is invest publisher interests with parties who bring a reputable audience and content they are not staffed to gather.

The issue of blogs versus newspaper written articles is wide spread and covers many industry channels. Take Dr. Jones, a medical professional, and his comments on the issue; “blogs like Science Based Medicine seem to offer the only guarantee of unedited rational thought on matters of health and medicine. Thank goodness, we’re no longer beholden to mainstream media for all our health news and commentary. It is a shame that most consumers get their news from TV and other outlets that don’t seem to maintain a journalistic quality filter”. To add perspective to the quote above, a newspaper asked Dr. Jones to provide a written introduction to a piece they were running on a specific medical procedure, but because of his written opinions, as strong as they may be, almost all of what he wrote was omitted and not published by the newspaper. I don’t know about you, but in the case of medicine, I would value the truth from a trained professional, versus the opinion of an untrained journalist on the topic.

Other interesting facts about blogs and bloggers:

• Total identified blogs, 126,861,574
• New blogs in last 24 hours of this post, 42,234, according to BlogPulse
• Blog posts indexed in last 24 hours, 918,400
• An estimated 77% of Internet users read blogs, according to Universal McCann
• 75% of bloggers have college degrees
• 40% have graduate degrees

more facts like this can be found here