NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Web Publishing vs content creation
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Web Publishing vs content creation
Peter Bull (peterb_at_dvp.com.au)
Tue, 2 Dec 1997 00:13:46 +1100
I wrote, and Donna Dolezal Zelzer (djz_at_efn.org) replied:
>> My local newspaper sometimes reprints articles from the London Times or the
>> Washington Post, but these articles are surrounded by ads from local auto
>> dealerships or retail food chains, not by ads for the London Underground or
>> for Chevrolet cars, neither of which are available where I live.
>
>This is irrelevant. These articles are REPRINTED. If you went to the local
>newsstand and were able to buy a copy of the London Times with the same
>article, you'd see the ads that were originally published with that
>article. Yes, some larger newspapers and magazines do have regional/local
>editions with, presumably, regional and local ads. But the revenue from
>these ads still goes to the original publisher/content provider and not the
>local newspaper or local book stand.
Perhaps. But you are confusing content creation with publishing again.
The London Times does three things, only one of which is publishing, and it
creates two quite different revenue streams from these activities:
1) The London Times creates and acquires content. Some of this is
created by staff writers, in which case they own extensive (but not
necessarily full) publishing rights, some they buy in from freelance
journalists, some they get from the wire services, some from syndication
houses, but nearly all of it they have to pay for in some for other. The
content is at this stage entirely free of advertising material.
2) The London Times publishes a newspaper. This involves wrapping
and packaging this acquired content with appropriate advertising for its
readers in London and some other parts of the UK. The London Times does
not compete directly against the New York Times in New York nor with the
Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney - not just because some of the content is
irrelevant, but mainly because those are not the markets its advertisers
are trying to address, and the advertising material is therefore
irrelevant. A newspaper is a vehicle for carrying local advertising, after
all.
3) The London Times resells content. Other publishers have customers
who they feel would be interested in the content the Times has created, but
not The Times itself, so they republish that content wrapped and packaged
with suitable advertising material for their own audience. The Times
doesn't give the content away, they very sensibly charge for its
republication.
The London Times is successful because it is tailored to suit a particular
regional audience, and it achieves a high level of circulation in that
audience by focussing on its local needs. Only an ex-pat Pom (Aussie slang
for British person) would live in Sydney and buy the London Times every
day. There are a few of these, but the revenue from them is infinitesimal.
Now imagine I'm an advertiser in London, I'm a London-based business, and
imagine also the Times is not just London-focussed as it is today but is
only one of several thousand daily papers in the world that is distributed
evenly throughout the globe, and the people of London or New York or Sydney
could pick up any one of those daily papers and read them whenever they
felt like, wherever they happened to be in the world. How would I decide
which of these thousands of papers to put my advertisements in? Even if by
some magic I didn't pay for ads that were seen by people in New York or
Sydney, I would still only get to a tiny fraction of the Londoners I really
want through any one of these papers. The chances are I would not
advertise in any of them. But I WOULD advertise in all the London
newsAGENTS so that when a Londoner went to pick up ANY of these global
newspapers he would see my ad. I would advertise at the source, not the
destination.
I really don't care which global newspaper my local web surfer wants to
read, and Lord knows there are enough to choose from now - or whatever
other web site he or she wants to visit, whether this is
advancedmacrame.edu or arabianbondagenights.com, if the customers are in my
local area I want to be able to advertise to them directly without having
to guess their eventual destination. Only the ISP who puts them onto the
Internet can supply that service to me. No website "publishers" can do
that, because they are destinations, not sources.
Peter Bull
Director, DVP Media Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Australia
peterb_at_dvp.com.au
For samples of DVP's most recent work, see:
The world's best online wine store - www.thegrape.com.au
Australian Provincial Newspapers Classifieds - www.checkoutclassifieds.com.au
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