Re: Bundled Package for Print and Online for Newspaper

From: Kim O'Connor <kimoconnor_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Wed 29 Mar 2000 09:22:07 -0800

JERRY LOO WROTE:
> I work for a newspaper that will have a print version
> as well as an online version. Can anyone suggest a
> good way to bundle print advertising with online
> advertising (ie package) in terms of price/structure
> etc so that there will be an incentive for an
> advertiser to take a package deal for both print AND
> online as opposed to just print or online alone.

While I do agree with part of Brad Jensen's reply:

BRAD JENSEN WROTE:
> see where you are making the most money on
> your advertising, and try to maximize that.

I do not agree with his statement that what you are
tying to do is a mistake. Also, I bet that your
advertisers are primarily "print" advertisers, not
online, am I right?

I worked at a local weekly paper here in San Francisco
a few years back, and was assigned this very project.

I managed to put together packages that we could sell
to local retailers. Back then, online advertising was
so new, it was not as easy as I had hoped, but it is
possible.

One suggestion I have is to create guides on your
website that are organized by category: shopping,
dining etc. If they are well done, and truly useful,
even labeling them "advertising section" will get
traffic. The print ads should direct the readers to the
site for special offers etc.

You can even offer them online coupons that the visitor
can print out if they do not have the paper with the ad
anymore. This should be publicized in the paper so
readers know and will go to the site to find specials
etc.

Just selling banners will not work well for the
retailers, and they will sour when they do not get the
results (visible results) that they can get with print
through coupons etc.

For some advertisers we designed mini-sites, though
about that time Citysearch came into this market and
went around practically giving away these pages, and
the advertisers did not see any results so were soured
on the online advertising possibility. So I focused on
the value of the paper's reputation and readership, and
the publicity we were doing for our site and how it
would benefit them.

As for pricing, what I did was use a reasonable CPM for
the online (around $15 for local advertisers, more for
National and agency buys) combined it with a few
standard print ad sizes and then offered a discount
structure that was tiered, the longer they ran, the
higher the discount. The key here is to keep it simple!

Also, we found that we had to have someone in our
production department that could design the banners
etc. as well as the print ads for the retailers who did
not have ad agencies. This was offered at no charge and
made us able to sell to all merchants.

I hope this helped a bit...

Good luck!

Kim O'Connor





Received on Wed Mar 29 2000 - 11:22:07 CST