Advertising

I can’t imagine this is new, but it’s the first time I’ve gone to a restaurant and received a coupon at the table prompting me to use my cell phone to get a free item. Last night when my family and I went to Beau Jo’s Pizza in Boulder, we each got the coupon above. Send a text message to the address printed with the special code, and you get back a text message showing you what you’ve won, which you show to your waiter/waitress.

With our two phones between us, we had two chances and both got free salsa and chips. (To go with pizza? We passed on our “winnings.”) But some lucky texting diners might win a $100 gift certificate at the restaurant.

I hardly think this is the state of the art for mobile coupons, but it does work, whether the diner has the latest iPhone 3GS or an old brick or flip phone. It reminded me that to effectively use mobile (for advertising and promotions or for editorial purposes), you don’t have to get super sophisticated. The uncomplicated phone text message can be an effective mechanism that serves everyone, vs. an iPhone app that has a (large but) limited audience.

I was disappointed in Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech to the Newspaper Association of America today. (Audio here, courtesy of Bill Densmore. Transcript of Q&A portion of Schmidt’s session, thanks to Poynter.org.) Oh, it was a fine speech and Schmidt educated some of the backward-thinking publishers in the audience, no doubt, about what’s ahead.

But Schmidt has expressed his respect for newspapers and a desire to help them survive. Well, he’s not promoting newsPAPERS surviving, but rather their large newsrooms of reporters capable of well serving society’s need for watchdogs of the powerful. That’s a role that Google does not want to play. He thinks that newspapers should use the Internet to get 10 times their current audience online and with mobile (cutting back on print), and he thinks that advertising will (eventually) be their salvation.

I was hoping for more from Schmidt. With a few instructions to his managers, he could direct billions of dollars to content producers, including news organizations. I don’t get why he doesn’t do it.

Why should Daddy Googlebucks help those newspaper publishers who are too behind the times to understand how to survive in our new world? Well, first, I want Google to support quality news content, which may come from a newspaper company, a news-oriented start-up, or a quality blogger who produces news. So I’m not talking about Google saving just newspapers, but rather about the company financially supporting quality content and journalism.

Right now legacy news executives are panicking, especially newspapers. They’re discussing schemes to put news content behind walls, away from Google’s prying eyes, and despite many rational and convincing arguments as to why that is a DUMB idea except in special cases, the movement appears to be gaining speed. (As to why it’s dumb, I urge you to read this great piece by search guru (and ex-newspaperman) Danny Sullivan, “Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It,” and Steve Yelvington’s month-old advice, “Eight barriers to local paid content.”)

If news executives continue down this misguided path, this loss of quality content will not be good for Google (nor the public). Sure, if a bunch of newspapers led by dinosaur executives cut off their noses to spite their faces, new news entities will arise and journalism will live on after a short period of ugly transition where the watchdogs are few and the bad guys in government and business get away with more than usual. It can’t be in Google’s interest to let this happen, and the quality of the web content it thrives on wither, even if only for a year or two.

What can Google do? What order do I wish Schmidt would issue to the Google troops from his lofty office? Here are two possibilities:

1. Turn on ads for Google News, and share some of the pie
Google News already has started putting contextual ads on searches of Google News. (Example.) Why not go further and turn on ads for all of Google News? Click the sports news category and see Google ads in the right column. See them on the Google News homepage.

Of course, if Google did that now, the screams of “Google is making money from my content!” by the media dinosaurs would grow even louder. Some would remove themselves from Google’s reach. But Google could calm down those ancient media beasts by simply starting a program where any publisher that’s tracked by Google News could participate. It would count the number of clicks through to a story that any publisher gets, then at the end of the month distribute a pile of money based on popularity of the various news sources.

The money pool would be filled with the money that Google advertisers paid when users clicked on the ads while using Google News. Google would allot a percentage of the revenue to be split among the publishers.

Why would Google do such a thing? Because going whole-hog on ads on Google News would incense publishers; doing it in a limited way (just search queries, as is the case now) would get less resistance, but Google keeps all the money. I’d think that full-out Google News advertising and Google voluntarily paying out a slice of Google News ad-click revenues to news publishers would mollify the seething and panicking news executives, and probably leave more money in Google’s account. Perhaps some of those dumb proposals to lock down news content would become unnecessary with a healthy revenue stream from Google for quality news publishers. (I emphasize “quality” because this simple scheme would reward the most money to news sites that get the most clickthroughs from Google News.)

I don’t believe that the news industry should demand this. Calling out the lawyers to demand that Google share Google News ad revenues seems like the wrong approach. But Schmidt says he wants to help pay for quality news content and keep reporters working. Google could send waves of money to news producers who continue to give their content away for free online. (Ditto for blogs, if such a program were instituted on Google Blogsearch.)

Based on Schmidt’s words to the NAA today, he thinks that Google can just get more people to click through Google News headlines, in such large numbers that advertising revenue will support news organizations online. I doubt that, and suggest that Schmidt take one step further back and get news publishers money directly from participating in a Google News ad-share program.

How about it, Eric?

2. The perpetual Google pledge drive
This second idea could complement the first. … Not long ago I ran across and wrote about Silicon Valley start-up Kachingle, and I fell in love with the concept. It’s a simple voluntary subscription that you (the online user) pay $5 a month for (or whatever amount you decide), and then that money is divided up each month among websites that you LIKE and that you VISIT. Publishers become Kachingle participants for free and display a medallion, and when Kachinglers who like your site visit, you get some of their money based on how often they visited your site compared to other sites they’ve told Kachingle they like.

It’s a bit NPR-ish in that you voluntarily donate to all the websites and blogs you like; and if you are a cheapskate and want all your content online free, don’t pay but still see everything. Like the scheme above, Kachingle supports quality content sites; popular news sites presumably will get more money from their fans. And money flows automatically, month-after-month, with regular credit card deductions from Kachingle member accounts.

Google could easily support this on Google News, by indicating when its source news sites (and blogs) are Kachingle members, and encouraging GN users to support news and online content by becoming a Kachingle member.

Why would Google to this? Pretty much the answer is the same as for idea No. 1 above. By using the power of Google’s many millions of users to drive voluntary regular contributions to Kachingle, Google would be financially supporting news sites and bloggers who produce quality content. Again, this would be a move to prevent panicky publishers from taking their content away from Google News because they’d have yet another revenue source to support them.

Schmidt told the NAA earlier today:

“If you see a headline what I want you to do is I want you to think, ‘Oh that’s interesting, I want to know more,’ and then based on that I want you to click to the newspaper Web site or to Wikipedia or to wherever. If we can build products — and we have teams at Google working on this — to roughly work like that where there’s a one-liner that’s interesting and you click and go into layer after layer after layer of information — and by the way, not just text but also video and entertainment, and so forth and so on — that’s personalized, we think we can build a business — again, with you guys — with significant advertising resources, where the advertising is targeted to the content. To me that’s the only solution we’ve come up with to this problem.”

Well, that’s going to take a while. Meanwhile, major metro newspapers, some in existence for 150 years, have died, and more will die. The simple ideas above would allow Google to quickly address the media crisis in a meaningful way, AND it would benefit Google.

Mr. Schmidt, I don’t expect you or Google to single-handedly save journalism and the news industry. Yet you have the power to improve the situation significantly. And it’s in your own interest.

What are you waiting for?

No doubt you’ve heard the “big” news that the New York Times has added an advertising spot on the front page of its print edition. Shocking, eh? The New York Post in covering the news says in a graphic accompanying its story, “New York Times Publisher Arthur ‘Pinch’ Sulzberger is smashing the paper of record’s vaunted Chinese wall between news and advertising by peddling front-page space.”

Puleeze. First, kudos for NYT making a move that might bring in some badly needed serious money to its legacy business. Second, plenty of other papers do front page ads (including in the U.S., USA Today and the Wall Street Journal), though it’s more common outside the U.S. I don’t believe for a second that ads on the front page will have any effect on editorial content. The worst that can happen is some embarrassing juxtaposition of a page 1 ad for a company that’s covered on the front page for some wrongdoing. But I suspect the Times’ editorial and ad departments are both plenty smart enough to avoid that.

My point in writing this item is merely to remark on what a big deal some folks are making about this move. Unfortunately, this kind of move (”OMG! Ads on the front page!”) passes for radical innovation in much of the newspaper industry. Compared to innovation in the online and mobile communications worlds, this is just a tweak. Compared to the kind of bold innovation that newspaper companies will need to make to survive in 2009 and beyond, ads on the front page — even of the New York Times — is not even worth a raised eyebrow.

I sincerely hope we’ll see so much newspaper-industry innovation in 2009 that in year-end wrap-up stories, this will barely merit mention.

On BusinessWeek.com, Ben Kunz writes about the trouble Twitter is having coming up with a business model. He suggests a bunch of possibilities, but finds problems with all of them.

I don’t get it. It strikes me that the best model is incredibly simple, and powerful: Insert a “TwitterAd” entry every 50 entries or so. Kunz thinks “users would rebel.” I doubt it. That’s a minor price to pay for a free service, and most folks will understand that it’s a necessity for the service to continue to serve them.

And if you don’t like the ads, then pay an annual fee (say, $20) for the ad-free version.

There’s been concern that advertising in social networks doesn’t work that well, but that’s not a concern here. I’m reminded of something I learned in doing some Eyetrack research a few years ago for the Poynter Institute. When ads were put directly in the editorial flow of content, they were seen and acknowledged much more than when off to the side.

And when an ad is designed in the same way as surrounding editorial content (color, font, etc.), it’s noticed even more. “TwitterAd” tweets would fit those criteria and my educated guess is that the ads would be incredibly effective, especially if Twitter adds contextualization to the mix (or select-the-type-of-ads-you-want schemes a la WeatherBug).

Dan Pacheco and the Bakersfield Californian have an intriguing project (funded by the Knight Foundation) called Printcasting. It’s a niche publication initiative that works in both print and online, and addresses “long tail” content and advertising. (OK, that description sounds a bit dull, but it’s a cool concept.)

For my ReinventingClassifieds.com site, I’ve written up a little piece about the implications for classifieds that Printcasting represents. If you’re a media geek like me, you may find it interesting:

Printcasting: the advertising implications

Widgets should be a huge part of most media companies’ strategy in the years ahead, as a way to spread their content around the web widely. (aka, the Distributed Web.) Here’s an interesting widget example from Pulse360 that comes with built-in advertising and revenue sharing, so that there’s incentive for lots of websites to carry the widgets.

This particular one is called the CBS 4 Denver network, and includes content from Channel 4’s news operation in the widgets in either video or story format. Topics include Denver news, sports, politics, lifestyle, arts and culture (standard local news fare). Website owners that choose to carry the widget select from among the general topic feeds. Continued

Here’s more good advice from Newspaper Next 2.0 (American Press Institute). As the report points out, in most newspaper markets, less than half of local consumers are frequent newspaper readers and as little as one-quarter or less of local businesses are newspaper advertisers. The latter figure is the result of most newspapers 1) not having ad programs that are affordable and effective for very small businesses, and 2) newspapers not bothering to court the smallest businesses in their communities. Continued

As a strategy to grow your news website, developing and deploying smartly designed widgets is an important one. This year you’ll see me write and hear me talk a lot about widgets and the overall concept of spreading your content far and wide online. News publishers by now should have deep-sixed the old notion that their content is sacred and should be restricted to viewing only on their websites. They must get used to the idea that their content can be just about anywhere — and that’s a good thing. Continued

The guys over at Evomo must be ecstatic about this. They make stylish mountain biking apparel (including some branded t-shirts commissioned by my former company, the Enthusiast Group), and one of their fans asked if he could get a tattoo using Evomo’s “Braincase” design. The answer from Evomo head honcho Bryan Thombs: “Hell-yeeeaaaah!”

So here’s the pic. The crazy mountain biker didn’t go so far as to brand Evomo’s name on his skin, but that’s still a pretty nice bit of free customer marketing for the company. He’s a walking billboard for Evomo, since everyone’s going to ask him about it.

That is a pretty cool design. If I were younger, I might wear that t-shirt; it doesn’t really fit my 51-year-old sensibilities. Tattoo? Probably not.

I’ve said here that I’m a (qualified) fan of the “social ads” concept that Facebook is implementing. But I’m only a fan as far as the concept goes; Facebook’s implementation still has major problems.

Example: In my Facebook News Feed this afternoon was this social ad, which appeared because someone on my friends list allowed it to be published:

Now that sucks. It’s a stupid way to advertise, because it gives the appearance that David Henderson is spamming my Facebook account with an ad from Blockbuster Video — which is not what he intended, I’m sure.

But if this was done right, it could be a great and cool form of advertising. If Dave had just rented the movie Rent — or had just rated it 4 stars on Blockbuster.com — then I’d be fine with receiving that information in my News Feed. If Dave was (because he agreed to) sending all his Facebook friends a $1 off coupon for Blockbuster, that would be fine. But the ad above is stupid and counterproductive on Blockbuster’s part.

The best way to handle this ad would be to 1) have the News Feed ad above be something like “David Henderson gave Rent 4 stars on Blockbuster.com” (relevant personal information about a Facebook friend’s activities, approved for publication by him in an opt-in manner), and 2) use the ad banner space in the left side of the Facebook News Feed page for a more conventional ad (like “One month free trial…”).

The social ad that showed up in my News Feed is dumb. If Facebook pumps that kind of crap onto user News Feed pages, the Beacon and Social Ad programs will fail.

Done right, they will represent a major positive innovation in online advertising.