Why's no one beating up the ad side?

My first newspaper gig was doing advertorials. I was stationed, naturally, in the ad department. It, not sports, is the playground of the newspaper for the very reasons Kindred mentioned.

A salesman gets some big accounts that pay their base salary. They service those three or four car dealerships or restaurants or realtors or jewelry stores. Anything after that is seen as bonus. Some bust their tail trying to increase sales to line their own pockets. Others, especially the long-timers, are making enough money that they'd rather knock off at 3 p.m. than cold call.

 

Both of you guys make great points.

It's shocking to learn how few managers have been trained to sell online.

 

Ad sales people at my last shop were highly commissioned based. They were always going to go for the 10k sell than the $500/month online sell.

Until ad sales move from commission to salary with quota requirements, you'll never see growth in online. Papers price their online ads too low and don't sell static ads, instead they sell "20,000 run-of-site impressions" for next-to-nothing.

 

Because the newsroom ALWAYS gets blamed. Period.

 

At my first paper, a suburban in a medium- to upper-class area, the woman (very beautiful, really cool) who had the car accounts made more money than the editor. She was the highest-paid person in the building (we didn't have a publisher on-site).

 

We -- among many others -- are most-certainly NOT blaming the newsroom.

It remains a national tragedy (no exaggeration) that edit staffs are being gutted beyond repair by pigheaded managements seeking to provide short-term succor to shareholders.

But to blame the prototypical advertising staff for the broad disappearance of thick
classified sections is beyond absurd. Blame Craigslist for that.

 

Someone mentioned Circuit City going belly up.
Add Fortunoff to CC and my paper lost $7 mill a year in advertising before this year even began....7 fucking million fucking dollars from Circuit City and Fortunoff.
So who do we blame for that?

 

Speaking of an outfit whose business model had been shot to hell for years, but was
still outwardly actiing as if all was still sunny and rosy . . . thy name is Fortunoff.
Their opening of a second major storefront within but a few city blocks of their
renowned Manhattan flagship was a sign of grotesque hubris . . . or shot-taking,
of immense proportions. Either way, they were doomed, but any false show of
confidence was wholly inappropriate, long after all rational hope was lost.

 

Frank is exactly right. Newspaper ad sales are relationship marketing, and the decline of local stores is a killer. I still use Sullivan Tire for minor automobile repairs four years after being laid off by the Herald because that local firm, God bless it, helped put bread on my table for 20 years. IMO, the consolidation in the retail trade has probably hurt newspapers as much or more than the Internet. Wal-Mart doesn't need us. When there were both Jordan Marsh and Filene's alive in Boston, they did.
When the relationship partner dies, what are the salespeople who maintained the relationship supposed to do? Talk about being told to do more with less.
I just want to repeat my main point. Newspapers are in critical condition due to pre-existing conditions. They have never been particularly well-managed businesses, and the task of putting out a daily paper is so daunting, long-range planning is alien to the organizational DNA. But the advertising flu is affecting ALL media. The advertising industry itself is in a panic over the future. There are companies, big ones, who are thinking that maybe a search algorithm or two can do all their marketing planning, so who needs Young & Rubicam.

 

Soccer

 

Additionally, I haven't heard instances of many, if any, newspapers who are using marketing or circulation folks to "seed" online content onto themed message boards, or to work on viral video plans.

Nope, they're still drawing up house ads for the print product.

If we're going to keep going forward in this direction, the whole building has to make the choice to come along. Otherwise, adios, amigos.