Print publishers long exploited their classified pages with obscene rates, which likely carried much of the cost of the editorial portions of their paper. That model no longer works, which is not to say there aren’t other ways to fund a print publication that is focused on a marketing initiative.

The real problem is how to fund the services of the professional journalists who write the stories and editorial content for these publications. The internet model has to date not produced sufficient income for newspaper publishers, since the popular expectation on the internet is cheap or free.

Print buyers can purchase print production at very competitive prices these days. It’s really a wide open opportunity created by those rushing to their computers. Hopefully marketers will find ways to create compelling content that addresses yet another issue: getting people to read anything at all!

Print publishers long exploited their classified pages with obscene rates, which likely carried much of the cost of the editorial portions of their paper. That model no longer works, which is not to say there aren’t other ways to fund a print publication that is focused on a marketing initiative.

The real problem is how to fund the services of the professional journalists who write the stories and editorial content for these publications. The internet model has to date not produced sufficient income for newspaper publishers, since the popular expectation on the internet is cheap FREE!

Print buyers can purchase print production at very competitive prices these days. It’s really a wide open opportunity created by those rushing to their computers. Hopefully marketers will find ways to create compelling content that addresses yet another issue: getting people to read anything at all!

Print publishers long exploited their classified pages with obscene rates, which likely carried much of the cost of the editorial portions of their paper. That model no longer works, which is not to say there aren’t other ways to fund a print publication that is focused on a marketing initiative.

The real problem is how to fund the services of the professional journalists who write the stories and editorial content for these publications. The internet model has to date not produced sufficient for newspaper publishers, since the popular expectation on the internet is cheap FREE!

Print buyers can purchase print production at very competitive prices these days. It’s really a wide open opportunity created by those rushing to their computers. Hopefully marketers will find ways to create compelling content that addresses yet another issue: getting people to read anything at all!

Note that newspapers, and everyone else, is perfectly free to block Google. If you’re not doing so, you’re either dumb or you believe that the value of visibility is greater than the cost of content creation.

Yes, Google is trying to drive down the cost of delivering advertising, because that’s one of the costs that they pay (and have to pass on to their customers). At the same time, they’re trying to drive up the value of advertising, because that’s how they make money.

In other words, Google is trying to drive up the profits of advertising. This is a bad thing for folks who make money off the costs or make money off of devaluing advertising but it’s unclear why it’s necessarily a bad thing for newspapers.

We publish print & internet guides to apartment communities in over 100 markets around the country. The market has six main players: three pure-play internet business and three integrated-media businesses that combine print and internet distribution.

From the start, we’ve been providing the print and internet distribution to our advertisers for one price, and we’re evaluated versus our competitors on a cost per lead basis (all of the leads are tracked through toll numbers and e-mail counts.)

In the apartment community space, the integrated media buy has two advantages over the internet-only buy: volume and cost per lead. The internet-only buy has one key advantage: lower absolute price.

My experience in this category has demonstrated that consumers will still refer to timely, easy-to-access print directories that incorporate well-organized and efficient information. They will refer to the web as well. And they will generate leads through both sources.

In fairly level market, an advertiser can differentiate themselves (in terms of lead volume and cost per lead performance) by using the print product, where, ironically, they can stand out more prominently than they might in an competitive online advertising category. Or, they can dial down their expenditures, and sacrifice some amount of lead volume, by advertising online.

For those of us competing in this sector, we’re watching the lead volume by media source carefully. When it become uneconomical to print the physical product, there is a path to convert wholly to the web product. I don’t see that happening soon in this category. Multiple media, multiple outlets, one message works, as long as it is economically rational for the advertiser.

Jeff. You know I agree with you 99% of the time, but this post is a rather broad brush indictment of books, newspapers and magazines based on a cherry-picked example of one narrow type of advertising.

I agree with you that classified advertising (like job-recruitment ads) are ideal for search-oriented transactions. Google and Craigslist proved that long ago.

But search advertising and classifieds are a solution to a specific type of marketing challenge. Other challenges demand other approaches.

You’ve just released a book (a good one that I’ve recommended to several people), but I would have never found had you not promoted it on this blog and had, instead, depended solely on purchasing Google search terms.

I’ll be the first to suggest (and have done so often) that certain business models related to print are going to die (like those that depend on classified advertising), but there are many things other media can do that the Web can’t.

Great marketers don’t want less media options — they want more.

Great marketers (and unfortunately, there are too few of them) know the power of the Web, but they also understand print, TV and outdoor as well.

Mini Cooper, Apple, Nike — they continuously challenge their advertising agencies to create great advertising using ever media imaginable.

Apple, for instance, is a brilliant advertiser in print, on TV and outdoor. Yet, ironically(?), its online advertising budget is a small fraction of what it spends on other media. Why? One could write a book on the answer to that question. Maybe call it What Would Apple Do? ; )

The problem, of course, is that Google never has paid for the cost of content creation, and their so ubiquitous that they’re driving the cost of advertising down to a level that WON’T support advertising, because of course, that’s not a cost they’re concerned about. Sigh.