Start Selling What the Customer is Buying…Part 2

The Newspaper Association of America just reported a 3% drop in online revenue generated from newspapers for the quarter ending September 08. While we have been witnessed print results falling, it now appears as though online revenue from newspapers is also falling behind the curve. This is the second consecutive quarter for year to year deficits from online. 

At just about the same time, online revenue, as reported by Emarketer, is forecasting continued growth. Of course this is for ALL online revenue and not just from newspapers. Still the contrary trends shown for online revenue from newspapers, and online revenue in general are striking. In fact, overall digital ad revenue growth is expected to average in the double digits yearly thru 2013.

Emarketer Onlilne Revenue Forcast thru 2013

So what’s the difference…how come these pictures are starting to look so different? One of the answers lies in the chart below showing Emarketer’s forecast for online revenue, by digital type.Ok, so the graph goes up, what else does it tell me? It tells me that there’s more than one way to advertise on the web, (understatement intended.) Search, video, lead generation, email marketing…how many newspapers are actively selling these?  Some are, but many are still emersed in trying to save classifieds and bundling banner ads in with print contracts when there are other ways to provide digital value. It’s a good effort to increase awareness of display ads using new tools such as Yahoo and behavioral targeting, but that just scratches the surface.

What to do? There’s a great deal of room to grow, but it may need to come in areas that newspapers are not currently playing, but can.

• More emphasis on display ads (banners, preferably behavioraly targeted) and less on forced upsells of classified listings
• More serious attention to working with search partners and less on forcing less effective banners when they are not targeted
• More fact finding about customer audience and applying marketing tools with a quantifiable ROI and less focus on forcing our own products into solutions.

All of this can be changed when newspapers have a full product portfolio of digital value that is available to any customer, combined with an ability to understand and articulate the value…whether or not the printed product is part of the solution. And don’t get me wrong, print still is not out of the picture, it just doesn’t have to be front and center all the time.