Google is auctioning magazine ads: Here. Quote: “In this test, the control is in your hands: you choose the ad size, set your price, and decide how you’d like to use the space. There’s no risk to you – you pay only if you win the auction.”
As I’ve said over-and-over, the Google business model (as it relates to Adsense ads running on non-Google properties) is the advertising sales representation (agent) model, or, in this case, broker. Also, the concept of auctioning media time and space online is not new — it has been around since the early days of the web — heck, Rocketboom is auctioning ads on eBay now. However, Google entering this “space” changes everything. I like this very much. I have a couple of magazines I’d like to add to their test.
See also: From MediaPost a couple of weeks ago: “Perennially in search of a better
market structure for trading media time and space, the ad industry has
been courted by Enron, Freemarkets.com, and even Google. On Tuesday,
some of the nation’s biggest advertisers got a pitch from a surprise
media buying “solutions provider”–online auction service eBay.
(via: John Battelle)
Technorati Tags: google advertising magazines
Maybe she could borrow some of Yahoo’s: Quote of the day from an intereview with Ann Moore, chairman and CEO of Time Inc. in today’s Wall Street Journal:
“We have to get our creative mojo back.”
(Background: Last year’s Yahoo mojo meme; and on Om Malik’s weblog.)
Technorati Tags: magazines, timeinc
Matt McAlister has some theories on the RSS question of the week: Why is RSS taking so long to reach big time mainstream adoption?.
Background: Matt works at Yahoo! where he has the title “Sr. Product Manager, RSS & Social Media.” I don’t know Matt personally, but a hack he created is how I get this RSS feed of del.icio.us/smallbusiness to be displayed on a webpage like this.
A long time ago, I quit complaining about RSS being confusing when I figured out that if I took a few minutes to understand it (and drafted off smart people like Matt), I could do stuff like that with it.
(Bonus: My advice to all of my business competitors: Forget RSS - it’s a total waste of your time. I suggest you focus on communicating via fax machines as I hear they are about to make a big comeback.)
Math quiz for reporters, new question: Recently, the WSJ.com Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik, had a quiz for reporters and editors that explored how reporters and editors get confused when trying to explain anything to do with numbers.
I have a new question to add to that quiz.
What is wrong with this article from MediaPost.com today? (Hint: There are several correct answers that can be found without doing any Google searches on past data — just use the information found below. If you do a Google search, you can find more, but don’t go to the effort — I’m not giving extra points.):
January Ad Pages Fall To Lowest Point Since ‘01,
Mag Revenues Down Too
“AFTER ENDING 2005 ON AN upswing, magazine ad pages continued to slide once again during the first month of 2006, according to estimates released late Tuesday by the Publishers Information Bureau. Consumer magazines measured by the PIB sold a total of 13,342.6 ad pages during January, a decline of 1.9 percent from January 2005. That represents the second consecutive year of ad page volume declines for January, and means the consumer publishing industry is still 0.5 percent below its January 2001 high of 14,079.6.”
Later, I’ll add an update explaining the most obvious mistakes.
Awesome magazine/blog news: Magazine consultant and B-to-B media blogger Paul Conley and Hershel Sarbin (who I can only describe as “legend” and one of my favorite people in the magazine industry) have started a “conversation in which (they) bring top executives and professionals in magazine enterprises to a rich dialogue on critical issues, trends and happenings that shape our business strategies and actions every day.” The “conversation” will take other shapes, they promise, but the first part of the conversation is a new weblog that examines weblogs being created and run by magazines. It’s called MagazineEnterprice 360. Great stuff.
Technorati Tags: magazines
He graduated “in theory”: Enhancing ones resume is not a good idea, especially if you’re only 24 years old and your job is at NASA and you think you need to “control the message” better among science reporters.
Quote from the NY Times:
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Not to get picky, but isn’t the “Big Bang” a theory? It makes sense to me and I assume it is correct, but has it moved from theory to “fact” while I wasn’t watching? Sorry, but I’ve become a skeptic about these things ever since I learned a low-fat diet isn’t necessarily more healthy than a regular diet.
The economics of small: I wish I could point to a free version of this story on page one of the Wall Street Journal.
Quote:
While big newspaper companies are increasingly battling the Internet and other sources of information and advertising, small papers have been able to keep a hold on their markets, concentrating on local politics, sports and community events. Most rural areas don’t yet have the same access to the Web that urban markets do, protecting small papers, for now, from the Web competition that has hurt major papers. Circulation at many smaller papers is holding steady, even as their big-city brethren hemorrhage readers.</blockquote
Technorati Tags: smallbusiness
