RIP Youngstown Vindicator

Being beholden to Facebook/Google ads ranks up there with ignoring the internet when it comes to evaluating the reasons newspapers are dying.

Every newspaper has an advertising department. Every newspaper sells ads for the print edition.

Why are they not pursuing digital ads in the same fashion? It's easy to identify available ad space on a web site. Price each position accordingly to your market and demand. And sell your own ads instead of relying on Google ads.

 

It's not that simple, unfortunately.

1/Ad serving technology is complex and not something a local newspaper or group would develop or maintain. Google has essentially created a monopoly here, just by virtue of its scale. There are a few other choices, but Google brings together the technology and analytics in a way its competitors don't.

2/Flip through your town's newspaper from 30 years ago, and look at the ads. How many of those advertisers still exist? Mergers and acquisitions have taken down department stores, grocery stores, hardware stores, and other major businesses. Couple that with the complete lack of need for classified anymore and the math just doesn't add up for advertising to fully support a publication.

The challenge now is to make the product valuable enough that readers will pay for it. That's going to be a difficult challenge in a world where news staffs have been severely cut.

 

Isn't ad serving technology essentially designed to target user behavior and location?

For a national outlet, that makes sense. For places like the Vindicator, local consumers are the target. And from there you can place ads via general demographics, just like you would in print.

Yes, the number of advertisers has dropped. But the remaining stores, restaurants, car dealerships, medical care providers, et al still advertise their services.

Why not sell a home page top spot to a local dealership instead of leaving it up to Google? Why not get a popular bar to sponsor the sports home page? Sports game broadcasts feature a sponsor for every special moment (replays brought to you by a hospital, pitching changes brought to you by a communications company, etc). Why can't news outlets treat their content similarly?

There has to be a way to cut out the middlemen and get remaining ad revenue to go from the company to the paper without Google/Facebook. No newspaper can survive on ads alone anymore (which is why the suits still are to blame for ignoring the internet and not starting sub models earlier), but there has to be a way to stop paying third party ad services.

Maybe you lose some of the features and analytics, but if all the money is coming to you instead of only part of it, perhaps it's worth it.

 

Saw that WABC, one of the strongest AM signals in the number 1 media market in America was sold for $12.5 million dollars. Back up point guard money.

 

Youngstown never recovered when the steel mills and other old line factories shut down in the 1980s. The paper’s ad base was marginal at best. Is Tom Wills still an editor there?

 

Ads online will never replace what newspapers received in print.
1) Online ads are incredibly cheap.
2) Consolidation of businesses into box stores isn't the only factor in losing advertisers. Classified ads are down. The internet has changed how people shop. They no longer need ads to learn about a business. Car buyers go straight to the internet a do a search and find the cheapest. There is less inclination to go to a place on name recognition. You search for a tv before you go to Best Buy. Even if an ad prompts the viewer to think to buy a product, the person will search for the product rather than go to the advertiser.

 

Newspapers *are* the middleman and Google and Facebook have destroyed them. It's so cheap and easy for a local small business to place their own highly targeted ads for pennies on the dollar compared to calling up a newspaper ad sales rep and getting some BS digital marketing package. Believe me, newspapers have tried it and are still trying it. And maybe they've convinced a few 85-year-old used car dealers that they still need an ad rep to guide them through making digital ad purchases. But any business owner with the slightest bit of digital acumen can do it themselves far more cheaply and effectively. And even the sales reps know that, which is why there's massive turnover on the sales side even in newspaper companies that have "rebranded" themselves digitally. No one wants to sell a crappy product. Those with any talent at all get out at the first opportunity.

 

If you're talking about journalists working at small-town papers leaving for bigger ones, I totally agree.

 

If real money could be made off online advertising, it would’ve happened already. We’ve been on this carousel for a quarter-century now.

 

Some weekly newspaper's gonna get a windfall from the mandatory legal advertising required by government.

 

Of course it won't replace print ads. That hope is long gone. I'm just saying what revenue can be brought in via digital ads should be kept instead of losing a hefty percentage to a third party like Google/Facebook.

 

You are very smart. This post is spot on.