Re: What's ahead

From: Marco Janeczek <info_at_webadvertising.ca>
Date: Fri 08 Feb 2002 09:54:09 -0500

One comment to make to the statement you pointed out is
that online advertising has never been local. It has
usually targeted National and/or International markets.

I have not seen yet a target network and online network
that has the ability to select by city.

[Note from Moderator... Certainly bizjournals.com and
citysearch.com can be used to target an audience that
is mostly local to the cities that they serve. I'm
pretty sure that many sites that require registration,
like nytimes.com, can also target ads to site visitors
that indicated a specific city of residence when they
registered.]

Usually advertising has been made to promote the brand
by giants such as Unilever, Sony and P&G or by internet
firms such as Perfumes.ca, Google, etc...

If such targeting would be possible, many local business
could jump on this and actually do advertise.

Any negative suggestion on this ?

The most interesting comment that you made is that there
are 50,000 visitors. Personally I think that with this
number a local site could actually get pretty good advertising
revenue. 50,000 x 1page view/day (minimum) x 22 days, converts
into 1,100,000 Impressions (468x60 only) not mentioning if you
have other ads. HMMM makes me wonder. Anyhow, this is only
counting 1 page impression / day by each user. Usually its
more... :)

Anyhow, back to the Subscription point. If only 1% (500 people)
out of 50,000 people subscribe to the news service for $4/month
(very reasonable price paid annually, then its sure for the
publisher) would convert into $24,000 annually in revenues.
This would be an additional revenue stream. MAYBE for Premium
Content. I'm Not sure here. Opt-in email and email sponsorship
could also be an additional model for this site.

Take a look at OttawaCitizen.com, a local webpaper for Ottawa
supported by a network of other papers (in its chain). As you
can see the stories are shared (a decrease in costs), and other
services are offered, such as a job board (careerclick.com).

The model of subscription would only have to apply to bigger
cities.

I will be testing this model soon with WomenOnline.ca a
specific targeted "ezine" for women in Canada. So, I will
share in the results.

Also please be aware that usually most of the content is
syndicated from services such as Moreover.com and NewsHub.com.
This decreases the cost for a local paper dramatically. Only
local content would have to be written. This content can also
be syndicated and shared with other online papers, by
using methods such as iCopyright.com, MedioCom.net, and
iSyndicate.com (not sure of any others).

The subscription model is not available in local papers, but
I think it will come soon.

The model currently applies to sites such as Wall Street
Journal, New York Times, magazines (ezines) such as TheEconomist,
online investing communities and papers such as TheStreet.com,
MarketWatch.com and also lifestyle mags such as Salon.com,
iVillage.com, Women.com and the one we will be testing
WomenOnline.ca

I guess in the end, consolidation would be a good answer.

Also to your question, I don't think personally that all
the websites provide the same information. There is alot
of information that can be found there, but local
information is only provided by a few sites.

Any input from others ?

Marco Janeczek
WebAdvertising.ca




Received on Fri Feb 08 2002 - 08:54:09 CST