NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> The missing chunk of "Peter Bull's debate wrap-up"
ONLINE-ADS>> The missing chunk of "Peter Bull's debate wrap-up"
Peter Bull (peterb_at_dvp.com.au)
Wed, 10 Dec 1997 21:33:47 +1100
If anyone reading my post of yesterday got confused and thought I had a
brain failure in the middle, I apologise, but one of those paragraphs
should have been three paragraphs. The italics below is the missing chunk
that was lost in transit,
There are no more than a handful of journalists who have ever
single-handedly successfully created a complete newspaper, designed the
layout, written the content, sold the advertising, and then distributed it
and made a profit. Well, in the pioneering days of the Old West maybe they
did (and perhaps that's not a bad analogy), but these days the idea is
charmingly naive (Like Mickey Rooney saying "Hey kids, let's put on a
show!"). But isn't that where we are today with web publishing? We can
dabble around the edges eking out a living from fringe online publications
with marginal advertising viability, like we were web versions of
I.F.Stone, or we can try to marry this medium to the existing advertising
sales structures and create vastly bigger audiences for the exciting
content of all kinds that most of us would prefer to spend our time
creating. And that means finding a way to get paid without pretending that
we will always own all the advertising rights inside all our con!
tent.
In mainstream publishing, "build it and they will come" is a concept that
is treated with derision. When traditional print publishers dream up a new
publication that is intended to be advertising supported, the first thing
that they do is presell all the advertising - the FIRST thing they do -
otherwise they don't bother to create it and publish it. How sensible!
Yet this is an alien concept to most of us highly technical and very
creative web entrepreneurs. We pour money and time into creating wonderful
online publications in the hope that somehow, magically, advertisers will
appreciate the quality of our work and clamour to buy our space. And
mostly they don't, because we know a lot about the web, but most of us know
jack about selling advertising, which as any rep will tell you gets harder
all the time.
The web must become a mainstream advertising medium that slips right in to
the product portfolios of the existing ad sales forces in the world, not a
sideshow full of assorted freaks, most of whom do not have the necessary
long-term support systems to survive. But that noble sentiment presupposes
mechanisms which do not yet exist and which we will be obliged to create.
Mechanisms for allowing publishers, those with the advertising forces on
the ground - and that mostly means the local newspaper, TV and radio
stations - to wrap their local advertising around globally accessible web
content of the end user's choice, together with other mechanisms to ensure
that some proportion of that revenue generated goes back to the content
creators/owners in the form of republishing royalties.
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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