Comments on: NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear

By: Putting things into context « The Hyperlocalist

Putting things into context « The Hyperlocalist — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:58:38 +0000

[...] recommendation supports something that CUNY J-school’s Jeff Jarvis suggested previously, that local businesses aren’t interested in advertising their presence to consumers who [...]

By: New Way For News Sites to Get Business to Pay? « Timothy Robertson – Portfolio Website

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:49:33 +0000

[...] on the Web, and I’m interested to hear what you have to say about it. The idea stems from a post by Jeff Jarvis back on Feb. 5. One line hit home: “…we won’t be selling media to [...]

By: When Big Box meets hyperlocal news « The Hyperlocalist

When Big Box meets hyperlocal news « The Hyperlocalist — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:43:38 +0000

[...] revenue and support editorial operations. But sponsors are always looking for an alternative, one that makes the same personal connections that fuel mom-and-pop businesses. And it doesn’t hurt to offer lower (but not too low) advertising rates and social networking [...]

By: Hyperlocal – Core Dimensions (Part 2) « End of Business as Usual – Glenn's External blog

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:38:27 +0000

[...] Jeff Jarvis also frequently has compelling insights into Local Advertising around Local News Media. For example, see his recent blog posts from February 2010: Stop selling scarcity and NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear. [...]

By: Advertising as Failure – an interesting perspective from Jeff Jarvis « End of Business as Usual – Glenn's External blog

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:33:43 +0000

[...] NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear – February 5 2010 [...]

By: Those who can, do. Those who know, sell. « The Hyperlocalist

Those who can, do. Those who know, sell. « The Hyperlocalist — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:41:38 +0000

[...] conference’s presenters, Jeff Jarvis, is a big proponent of entrepreneurial journalism and posted on his blog some very good points on what local advertisers want (and need) from hyperlocal news outlets. [...]

By: Links 10-02-10 « The Cutmedia.com blog

Links 10-02-10 « The Cutmedia.com blog — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:33:06 +0000

[...] NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear > BuzzMachine, Jeff [...]

By: ? Altona Info - Hyperlocal umme Ecke | Heimat Hamburg

? Altona Info - Hyperlocal umme Ecke | Heimat Hamburg — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:27:07 +0000

[...] wie “meine Stadt” oder Hamburg.de zu schaffen – auch und vor allem bei der lokalen Vermarktung. Bisher nur in Einzelfällen, wie dem Heddesheim-Blog (Heddesheim bei Mannheim, Kinder Kinder wo [...]

By: Jennifer Deseo

Jennifer Deseo — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:35:59 +0000

Thanks! Will look into that.

By: Dave Chase

Dave Chase — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:28:07 +0000

Jennifer – We are doing just that at http://www.SunValleyOnline.com with mom & pops. We mainly use Mixpo which is a very cheap & easy way to create videoads (often slideshows). The catch is we end up doing the ad creation for them as they are too swamped and want us to take it on. We are able to charge a nice premium over standard ads for these rich media ads. Fyi, we also use Impact Engine which also creates Flash ads built off templates. One of the nice things is both Impact Engine and Mixpo demo extremely well. I strongly advise giving whoever is doing the sell a wireless card so they can bring their laptop with them. Mixpo works even better as you go to larger advertisers (though I’m still talking tiny advertisers by Mad Ave standards).

By: Dave Chase

Dave Chase — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:23:20 +0000

It’s one of the reasons why things like Groupon are doing so well. They are “selling the outcome” – well said. In an earlier post Jeff spoke to the Telegraph and Burda (?) doing direct sales. One way to overcome the lack of sophistication of local advertisers is to remove ALL complexity. Handing them a customer/sale does that.

Jeff – In your latest Twig you made a passing reference to retailers as media companies. It would be great for you to expand on that. I wasn’t thinking about retailers specifically but I keynoted an event in Memphis about 9 months ago where I posited “We’re all Publishers Now” (audience was mainly marketing execs of mid-sized companies). It’s one area of “education” I referenced in my earlier comment that a local publisher is really well positioned to share expertise – i.e., how a merchant can think like a publisher.

By: Stop selling scarcity « BuzzMachine

Stop selling scarcity « BuzzMachine — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:27:16 +0000

[...] « NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear [...]

By: Curated Stories, Weekend Feb. 6 and 7, 2010

Curated Stories, Weekend Feb. 6 and 7, 2010 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:09:06 +0000

[...] NewBizNews: What ad sales people hear Published: February 5, 2010 Source: BuzzMachine Recently, at CUNY, we held a roundtable for ad sales people from hyperlocal blogs to big newspapers to hear what they are hearing from local merchants. We’re wrapping up our research for the New Business Mode… [...]

By: Duncan Higgitt

Duncan Higgitt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:12:02 +0000

Only a tangent connection, but you might be interested in the views of a journalism student just about to enter the industry in the UK: http://waleshome.org/2010/02/journalism-from-the-bottom-rung/

By: Jay Leon

Jay Leon — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:55:04 +0000

Buyer beware is different when you are your own salesperson. When an advertiser signs up for advertising by filling out a form on the web — the buyer is acting as the buyer and the salesperson. Any promises the salesperson would ordinarily make during the sales process are removed. And the promise of value becomes implicit. If no value is delivered, the joke is on the buyer–and the buyer will likely accept that the mistake was theirs.

The process of selling does add value, including delivering the education piece referenced above during the sales process, along with explicit promises for performance. Executed well, the outcome for the advertiser will be much better.

By: Ad Sales Online: What the future holds | Media and Tech

Ad Sales Online: What the future holds | Media and Tech — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:22:32 +0000

[...] And Max Kalehoff says it well in the comments: “Sell the [...]

By: John P Garrett

John P Garrett — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:08:04 +0000

The problem with the current news model isnt that we need to blow it up and depend on bloggers to produce news. It is that for the last 10 years our wonderful newspapers have become more and more irrelevant to the reader and have raised their prices along with their content cuts. Why arent the editorial departments looking at themselves in the mirror and blaming their writing? Its about relevant content and distribution. Plain and simple – and the news media and the egos that go with the old school journalists have done everything they can in the last decade to defeat both of those important foundations of journalism. Its not the fact that the content is printed. Do all the roundtables you want. If newspapers would go back to the basics (content and distribution) they would get the advertisers back in droves. If the Huffington Post with its 9 million unique visitors cant make a profit then neither will any of your panelists. Best intentions I know – but the online model doesnt work. The power of the press is the press.

By: Elaine

Elaine — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:45:53 +0000

Wading into the lion’s den here, I know, but this sounds a lot like Clayton Christensen’s idea of “jobs to be done,” included in the original

By: Jennifer Deseo

Jennifer Deseo — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:32:04 +0000

Last fall, I attended CUNY’s meeting on new business models and very quickly grew frustrated with one speaker’s suggestions on ad design. Media-rich ads were most successful, he said. But what mom-and-pop local business can afford that?

Thank you for this post, and for outlining the distinct needs of hyperlocal businesses (and the hyperlocal publications that hope to serve them).

By: Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:22:55 +0000

Well said, Max: “sell the outcome.”

By: Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:22:37 +0000

Yes, I think that’s part of it. What we heard is that such networks can reach down to more local levels: just as the paper can sell into Yahoo, the local blog can sell into the paper (and into Yahoo?) and vice versa.

By: Max Kalehoff

Max Kalehoff — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:05:24 +0000

Indeed, there are various sorts of local advertisers: to simplify, let’s say national brands, regional and local businesses. They all have different goals and levels of sophistication, but one this is true: the closer you get to smaller and local businesses, the less patience and understanding business owners have for advertising. They need to run their businesses, not geek out on advertising. While they don’t necessarily care about advertising, there’s one thing they really do care about: getting more customers. It’s that simple and local media organizations need to not only provide that service, but sell the outcome. That’s a different business than what most local media businesses are in today, but it’s one most will need to get into. Small and regional businesses (approximately) represent a good half of our economy and ad spend, so this need to deliver new customers and outcome is not trivial.

Conversely, national brands that advertise locally have different objectives. And far more often than smaller, local businesses, they’ll have interest in more conventional (and softer) advertising offerings that media salespeople have long sold, like reach, frequency, demos, etc.

By: Eric Newton

Eric Newton — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:37:15 +0000

This approach sounds a lot to me like the Yahoo! project with many hundreds of newspapers. Helping newspapers sell service to local merchants, helping them into cyberspace.

By: Dave Chase

Dave Chase — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:43:24 +0000

Great observations and consistent with what I have heard/seen from working with lots of local advertisers at SunValleyOnline which is one of the sites talked about in the CUNY “census” you guys did that has managed to build a reasonable (and profitable business). I generally agree with what you’ve laid out but will amplify or differ with a few items.
1. Education: Hands down the biggest need I’ve seen. Sales people need it. Merchants need it. Local agencies/marketing consultants need it. Citizen ad sales will really need it. It’s the reason I collaborated with a former colleague to create a how-to resource for local merchants on marketing in the digital age that I’m making available to the ventures I’m involved with. I believe there’s scalable ways for local sites to tap into this without having to do all the training themselves that can also serve as lead generation.
2. Tools for advertisers to manage their own ads: Despite having two tools (Impact Engine and Mixpo) that have very easy interfaces and through much encouragement, virtually no advertiser is taking advantage of it. They simply want us to take care of it. The advertisers I’ve worked with aren’t sophisticated at all from a marketing perspective.
3. VideoAds: This is primarily a function of the size of advertiser you are going after and where they’ve advertised. Generally, it’s the bigger advertiser who has run TV ads before that will be candidates to move $$. Turns out one of the categories where $$ are finally starting to move is political ads. The recent Supreme Court decision will accelerate that. Dynamically built videoads is a particularly promising area and is something that took place in the recent Massachusetts Senate race (on the winning side). There’s some powerful tools that allow A-B testing, message optimization, etc. that are accessible even to the smallest advertiser.

By: Judy Sims

Judy Sims — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:50:18 +0000

Jeff, I’m so glad that you are talking to advertisers. It is a vital step in developing the new business model for news, and one that is all too often ignored.

I think there is additional value to meeting with advertisers in different categories on a one-on-one basis in their own environment. Restaurants will have different needs than furniture retailers.

Through these conversations, the path forward will become more apparent.