Digital ads. It’s a revenue stream that most members have not tapped into very much. The website Digiday brought it up last week in a good post. Josh Sternberg wrote that the old way of charging—CPM, cost per thousand views—doesn’t make sense for small publishers.
“While they may be large enough to have influence over a particular demographic, looking at them on a buyer’s spreadsheet, they’re still peanuts,” he wrote. “Instead, by positioning their expertise about their audience in a marketplace that has gone whole hog into pageviews, these smaller publishers are making a go at creating working models.”
He cites the “publisher as agency” model, where the publisher actually helps brands develop advertising content for their site and others. This, of course, moves closer to native advertising which I discussed here earlier this month. But it also takes advantage of some of the things that publishers do well—creating content, writing, knowing your subject and audience. The Digiday story referred to an interview on another site—AdExchanger—with Todd Anderman, the new president of sales, marketing and operations for Thrillist Media Group.
Instead of looking at your digital ad scope haphazardly, Anderman wants you to focus. “It’s not just about throwing up an ad unit around [your] content, though those opportunities do exist. It is about finding out from marketers what product they have that should be recommended to our audience.” He believes that ads on the site should be of value to your audience. And he even wants it in a similar tone to what you’re doing. “The idea is to do it from an editorial perspective so that it completely resonates with the users, as opposed to marketing messages that comes purely from outside.”
It’s truly amazing how far things have come—from that never-to-be-tread-upon line between editorial and business to the almost complete melding of them. Wasn’t it just yesterday that The Los Angeles Times was ready to fold when a scandal erupted with an article in their magazine that dared cross the line? Now that seems light years ago. There are no more lines—though one SIPA CEO suggested sales and marketing might be on the verge.
“If we make sure that you start with a complementary message to the content we run, it actually becomes the content,” Anderman says. “To the user, it is just as valuable as any other piece of content.” This actually has exciting possibilities. Say you post a video of a one-on-one interview with an industry player or government official. In the past, we’re used to seeing a preceding ad that’s of totally no interest to us—but if we want to see that video we ride it out. What if it’s interesting ad content to your audience? Maybe an ad for something espoused in the interview. That could be a win-win scenario.
Again, the line crossing of native ads sounds a bit extreme. But Anderman is one of the most successful players in digital ads. He was asked about where to draw the line, but except for saying, “We will clearly differentiate between the two for the user,” he doesn’t care that much. It’s quality he’s after—and dollars, of course.
Maybe that’s not so bad. Digiday quotes John Shankman, publisher of The Awl, which gets 425,000 uniques per month. “Data and production value will become what we compete on more and more.” (SIPA2013 will have a must-attend Pre-Conference session on data with Russell Perkins, the guru on the topic. He will be able to explain its growing importance AND how you can profit from it A LOT better than I can.) Shankman believes that “you can win business on production value.” In other words, who is providing the best overall experience for users? Content, ads, events, videos, etc. It’s all one.
Even a daily deals publisher like Thrillist is not after pageviews any more. Say they’re selling a bar crawl, then on the right you’ll see “native ads” for shirts, shoes, ties and a membership-only penthouse pool club. It’s all high production value, and then those same ads can be mixed and matched with their other content—chef tastings, March Madness get-togethers, turntable tutoring, etc.
Ties on a bar crawl?
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @RonnatSIPA