MediaPost | Online Publishing Insider

Woe The Digital Sale: Handling The Undependable Buyer

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:00:39 -0500

Question from a salesperson: I work for a large multimedia company. During one of the most competitive times of the year, I was assigned a new account. To make a good impression, I put the inventory the agency wanted on hold for almost three weeks -- but when the launch date approached, they bailed on the buy. I guess I understand that this happens, but now I'm getting reamed internally. What is the best way to handle this? How can I know if a buyer is worth her word?

Performance-Based Pay For Content Has Gone Mainstream -- Which Is Probably Good For Authors

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:37:57 -0500

This week Forbes magazine again touted its success with the business model it calls Entrepreneurial Journalism, without so much as a titter (or a twitter) from the media. Forbes' journalism model, pioneered (then dropped, then readopted) by Nick Denton at Gawker Media, was very recently considered a controversial and even a heretical approach for journalists. The value proposition, however, is deceptively simple and makes sense: Pay writers bonuses based on the audiences they can attract.

The Night Before New Year's

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:15:00 -0500

It was easier to have dinner with a group of friends in New York City the night before New Year's Eve than New Year's Eve itself. My friends picked out a hot spot in the meatpacking district. I live on the Upper East Side, so with earphones playing a soundtrack for my evening's commute, I headed out towards the subway station at 77th and "Lex."

The Groupon Pile-On

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:56:19 -0500

It's that time of year again, when the press smack around a company they were in love with only moments ago. The most recent target: Groupon. Why? Not because any of the company's fundamentals actually changed, but rather because it's cheap journalism with that magical elixir of wunderkind and controversy. Better yet, it drives pageviews (read: revenue) for publishers. The only problem: it's total bullshit.

Leaving Adton Abbey

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:24:42 -0500

A dispatch from a once gilded abbey, now in a state of disrepair: My Dearest Publisher, Over the past couple of decades, we have weathered wave upon wave of challenges -- and, frankly put, it shows. Our carefully built walls of distribution have all been washed away by Search, and we can easily see the tides of Social building on the horizon. A few of us hold out a distant hope for tablets, but in my heart I fear these walls may never be rebuilt.

Custom Site Or Customized Site?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:53:20 -0500

A client recently told me that it had taken two years for his IT department to deliver a site redesign. The first deadline was six months, but the project had been extended repeatedly. Now he wondered what was reasonable. Unfortunately, too many publishers have experiences like this because they get suckered by two concepts. First, they are convinced that their site has to be "unique" and therefore must be created from scratch. Second, they are tricked to believe the developers who say "don't worry, all the software will be free."

Woe the Digital Sale: Is It 4 Ps -- Or Just 1 P?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:18:18 -0500

Question from a seller of digital advertising: I recently sat down with a very knowledgeable, respected, veteran, media buyer for a meeting. And after the usual pleasantries, he said "So my team tells me that you're more expensive than your competition -- which of course is getting more business from us." Please tell me, why is price still the most important issue over product, promotion or placement?

Online Publishing Winners And Losers Of 2011

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:53:53 -0500

Among the winners is portal of the year, Yahoo. The whole category is on its back nine. All three (I don't consider Google a portal) will continue to lose ground, since the 13-year-old-plus crowd looks at email the way we view letters. However, there is plenty of money to grab on the descent.

Get That Appointment: Action Speaks Louder than Words

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:34:29 -0500

Amy Auerbach and Jason Krebs recently wrote about the stand-off between the buyer who isn't interested and the salesperson who calls repeatedly for the appointment. It's a classic situation that defines the nature of sales and the need for salespeople who sell smart. The buyer thinks she knows what the salesperson is offering -- but, until the buyer has seen the pitch she really doesn't know what she is rejecting. The salesperson thinks he knows the buyer would need his media, if she would only listen to a pitch.

Woe The Digital Sale: 'Call Me Next Year'

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:47:58 -0500

Question from buyer: Do salespeople ever give up? I've had the same vendor calling me now for 10 months. Why won't he take the hint?

A Rare Admission Of Failure

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:38:07 -0500

I started this year by laying out a step-by-step strategy for how to transform publishing in the age of the iPad. My January article "iDiots' Guide to Publishing on the iPad" was a hit on Twitter. Boy, was I wrong. I dished out a ton of advice, offered specific suggestions about how publishers should cross the chasm to digital publishing, how to engage their readers, and how they should productize it. For all my good ideas, I fell short by missing the most important element: the hardest thing in the world to change is human nature.

Moneyball for Ad Sales

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:25:03 -0500

How many of you find yourself competing with the "big guys" on a smaller budget? Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager, was determined to find a way for a low-revenue professional baseball team to compete successfully with teams spending two or three times as much on top player salaries. He found a way, with strategies vividly described in the book "Moneyball" -- and now the much more widely consumed movie.

Woe The Digital Sale: 'What's With All These Buzzwords And Acronyms?'

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:39:02 -0400

Question from an agency person: "I'm new to the digital world and sometimes I can't understand anything you people are talking about. What's with all the foreign language and acronyms?"

Expanding The Truth

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:30:00 -0400

The first time I witnessed how comfortable our industry was telling stories in public based on half-truths was at the iMedia Summit in Arizona in 2002. During one session Joe Apprendi, who is now the accomplished CEO of Collective Media and the owner of a great smile, took the stage in front of hundreds of sellers and buyers to show off his company's wares at the time -- a rich-media company aptly named Eyeblaster. He claimed his company's rich-media ads were more effective than other display ads that didn't make him rich.

Yes, It's The @!#'^% Technology

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:19:02 -0400

The Unabomber delivered an anti-technology manifesto as he terrorized the U.S. for nearly two decades. Technology and its impact terrified him. He's not alone. Technology stalks the halls of the executive suites of America's corporations, and while most executives won't admit it, it scares the hell out of them.

Structured Sales For Success

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:15:02 -0400

Last week I stopped in Chicago to speak to a conference of local-media publishers. If you too have traveled through the United hub in O'Hare recently, you have also seen advertising for a hotel chain printed on the handrails of the moving walkway and escalators. It's just one more example of the targeted media that is assaulting your market. The "escalator media" sales team -- or its moral equivalent in your market -- is calling on your advertising customers, distracting them from buying from you.

Woe The Digital Sale: Pumped Up For Q4

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:00:24 -0400

Question from a media seller: I'm hearing mixed things about the ad business in 4th quarter. Now that we're here, should I be bullish, bearish or in between?

Making A Living On The Privacy Fault Line

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:00:46 -0400

One summer I earned money by knocking on the front doors of houses with concrete curbs. I would ask whoever answered if they would like their house number painted on their bare curb, "so your house will be more easily spotted in case of any emergencies." Those who said yes paid me after approving my work.

Now imagine if I were paid directly by a company like Target who, in return, received information about the shopping habits of residents living in the homes whose curbs were painted. Imagine further that local police departments allowed me to paint these curbs without obtaining the homeowner's permission. The only houses skipped would be owners who contacted the police to be added to a "do-not-paint list."

Don't Blame Bartz

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:30:18 -0400

The problem at Yahoo was not Bartz, but the Yahoo board of directors. Remember that Bartz was hired to pacify angry shareholders, furious that Yahoo's board was delusional enough to turn down a $47.5 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft. Two years later, Yahoo trades at a third of that price. The company lost $30 billion because Yahoo's board failed to recognize what type of company they are running. Despite its sprawling Silicon Valley campus, and loads of talented engineers, Yahoo is not, and never was, a technology company.

Why Bartz Lost

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:00:11 -0400

>Carol Bartz lost her job recently as a consequence of failing to get Yahoo's advertising revenue growing. How did Yahoo, with all its hundreds of millions of users and billions of page views to sell to advertisers, fail to grow in the last year? Simple. It lost the positioning battle, the struggle for a positive place in the minds of advertising buyers, where the bulk of Yahoo's revenue is derived. Without a positioning that captures the imagination of the market, Yahoo ad revenue flat-lined while it grew for others.

Woe The Digital Sale: Have I Jumped Too Often?

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:45:18 -0400

Question from a seller: I keep hearing that the market is heating up, and I'm starting to get calls for interviews. What is weird is that companies are questioning why I have been a seller for so many different companies in the past years. Isn't it expected in the Internet business that people jump around? How can I position myself as the best candidate in light of these questions?

Woe The Digital Sale: Cleaning Up The Trash Talking

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:45:39 -0400

Question from a media seller: In an industry where your reputation means everything, how can you abate the damage that someone else is inflicting on your personal brand via gossip and comments to others? When working closely with a "mean girl," how do you circumvent (i.e., avoid) the punitive nature of this person?

Ten Things I Think I Know

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:45:20 -0400

With respect and attribution of this column's title to Peter King of Sports Illustrated, here are ten things I think I know.

Where the Small Businesses At?

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:45:25 -0400

If local advertising is the future, where are all the customers? $137 billion will be spent in local advertising this year, yet only $22.9 of it will be online, according to BIA Kelsey Group. That's a pretty small pie on a relative basis, cut into several smaller pieces. For online publishers reliant largely on display advertising to keep the lights on, these are not encouraging numbers. What gives?

There Is No Secret Handshake

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:41:03 -0400

My salespeople have an automatic advantage," said the CEO of the behavioral ad network. "My salespeople talk to advertisers and agencies about the client's customers and how to reach them. That is an advantage because their own needs are precisely what clients and prospects want to talk about." This is a stark contrast to media properties who open the conversation talking about their own audience, which the buyers don't directly care -- about.

Woe The Digital Sale: No Fun At All

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:30:07 -0400

Question from a buyer: I'm a 24-year-old digital media planner. Why does everyone make fun of me?

D.N.T. Is Full Of B.S.

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:30:41 -0400

Evidon hosted a consumer privacy conference on July 19 in New York City, which I attended. The conference agenda centered on "our" industry's self-regulatory program called "Do Not Track" (D.N.T.). The experts on the panels were incredibly well-spoken, extremely well-educated on the subject matter, seemed like very nice people -- and, for the most part, were all full of b.s.

Waxman V. Rothenberg

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:00:21 -0400

The current fight about self-regulation of consumer privacy between Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) and the online ad industry is a shining example of when gut instinct can lead to fatal errors. Make no mistake: we are teetering on the edge of sweeping regulations that will wipe out some questionable companies in our space, and do damage to most others. We are in this position because our industry leadership is making a classic strategy error: believing that 100 good short-term tactical moves equate to a winning long-term strategy.

Free Media Is A Distraction, Not A Threat, To Publishers

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:15:58 -0400

Interest in so-called free media is a big driver of advertiser interest in social media, but do companies achieve value in free media that is out of proportion to their investment in earning it? Does the advertiser pursuit of free media kill the social media party?

Woe The Digital Sale: Do I Hear The Word 'Free'?

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:30:11 -0400

Question from a media buyer: We're getting pressed by our clients to get more "free media" for them, but it's getting harder to do. They expect social media to cover the gaps, but even social sites can't guarantee anything. We have to pay for it all. Since we buy media on social sites, what about getting social media with other sites too?