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Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials
Adam9 writes "As Salon fights for survival, they have introduced a new advertising program that allows you to receive a free 12 hour pass by clicking through about 10 seconds of advertisements. Currently, the advertisements are from Mercedes-Benz. According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995. They also have about 45,000 subscribers right now." Jamie also pointed out this article from the WSJ, as well as the words from Salon themselves about it.
Overheard from irc.slashnet.org:
;)
slyguy^: How many paying subscribers are there to Slashdot?
Hemos: 12. After we split it all up, I got a #4 combo at Taco Bell.
It's an interesting idea, a "temporary subscription" in return for viewing some advertising. It seems there's something for everyone. The advertiser gets a forum where people actually have to click through the ad; Salon gets some money from the advertiser; and non-subscribers get access to "premium" content. If this works (and Salon stays in business in part because of this), perhaps other content sites will follow suit.
-Brendan
Now they have a solid base of advertisers and 45,000 paying subscribers, which is really good for an online magazine. The WSJ article says they are looking at a strategy of reducing costs. Sounds like a plan to me. Is it really conceivable that they can't find a way to keep costs within expected revenues?
It's clearly inline with their advertisers wishes.
The advert i saw the other day from mercedes benz was clearly designed to be exactly that sort of click through. It had 4 pages of very flash oriented adverts for some new car.
I must admit it was quite effective, and if i had the money to buy a mercedes then the ad might have effected me.
If it were better targetted and perhaps extolled the benifits of red bull and coding sessions then i might have gone for it.
Which is exactly why CPC (cost per click) aint as popular as it used to be.
.. getting the customer to click thru isnt as important to the advertiser as youd like to think. (Although, granted, with aquisition campaigns, usually hybrid deals rear their ugly heads .. like CPM with a little Cost Per Action thrown in .. or sometimes its _just_ CPA.)
.. they force the impression out of you, which is actually _good_ for the advertiser.)
CPM (cost per thousand) is the defacto standard.
Furthurmore, most ads dont have anything to offer beyond the clickthru. Internet advertising is primarily a branding medium
Actually _seeing_ the ad for longer than 2 seconds is. (Salon isnt forcing you to click, they're forcing you to watch
I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
I was a paying member of Salon for a year. The main way I read Salon was through my PDA using Avantgo. Salon's method for prompting users to get premium subscriptions was by giving a 1 page teaser of a premium article, then saying they should become paying members to read the rest.
Their avantgo channel, however, had no method in place for Premium subscribers to get full stories on their PDAs! For a year, the premium stories would have their little teaser, then at the bottom there would be a little apology to the effect of 'Sorry, we haven't made a channel for our premium subscribers yet, but we will soon!'
Empty promises.
They never made the channel, and since my primary interface to Salon was via PDA, I wasn't getting what I had paid for (premium access).
Their business decision to indefinately postpone the premium channels have probably cost them quite a handful of customers, which is unfortunate.
According to the article, they've lost about $79.7 million from their start in 1995.
During which time VA Software lost $725 million.
I used this little feature about two weeks ago. I wanted to read the rest of one their "premium" articles that I really wanted to see the conclusion of. I just happened to actually read one of the ad's that claimed that I could get a free pass to read this article if only I would look at this $60,000 BMW or something. I agreed. After about 10 seconds an ad with about 10 frames generated. By the time I got to the third or fourth frame, I noticed that I didn't have to click through all of the images. In the lower corner, in very fine print, was a "skip to article" button or something. It worked.
I'd like to state that I worked for a company that had over 180,000 "subscribers" before it folded in 2001. We didn't charge for a subscription, but we did charge for content. Each piece of content you viewed was a small fee. Quite frankly, I was never convinced of this business worthiness of this approach. We burnt through about 30 million before going belly up. Looks like Salon will be doing the same thing.
I think online communities are going to have a hard time selling to individuals. While the metaphore works for real world newspapers and magazines, their publishing numbers are going down. Less people are reading them because they can get free content on the web. Now, I totally believe you should pay for content, but it should be subscription based and not be on a per site basis. In a sense, it should work like AOL (I know, I know). With AOL, you get prepackaged content. I'm suggesting you pay xx.xx dollars and get a pass to 20 or 30 web sites that all use the same password. You should be able to sign up for these sites through different subscribers, like you would your domain registration or cable access. The web sites still get the same amount of money, but if one 'net-network can provide a lower price but sell to more people, they can compete. They could also provide different site packages or offer more sites.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Who really thought that giving ... facials over the internet was a good idea?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would think any company that could figure out how to give facials over the Internet would make a ton of money. I'd like to see a copy of THAT business plan !
Anyone remember those old warez sites, (and some H/P/A sites as well) where they tried to force you to click their sponsors, or links to top-sites in order to access them?
I guess all kinds of marketing comes around. But the real question is, are people too cheap to pay for salon premium really going to buy Mercedes-Benzs?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Damn, post a story about how Salon is losing money and then link them in the story? That's like telling your doctor that you have a headache and then they kick you in the nuts.
I know these things because I write the ad delivery server for a company that has about 10% online penetration (one in ten americans online have 'hit' my ad server at some point.)
In those 1 in 10 Americans that have 'hit' your ad server, I'm sure that 9 of 10 would like to 'hit' something else.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
It has been noted that Salon's financial woes (how the hell did they rack up 80M in debt?) stems from them hiring good writers. Excellent writers, in fact, top-of-the-line. Noam Chomsky comes to mind. But I have to point out that Alternet.org has writing that is, IMO, and just a smidge to the left of Salon.
So I have to ask, was the 80M in debt really necessary? Personally, I like Salon, and it is one of only three news sites in my bookmarks (along with the BBC and the aforementioned Alternet.org), and I am a subscriber to their premium service. But the idea that writers won't write unless they're paid is a lot like the RIAA saying people won't make songs if they can't !@#$ you in the butt for $16.99/cd. Just doesn't make any sense. But it sure seems to make sense to Salon:
"The greatest weakness of Internet users -- all of us -- is our failure to recognize the value of intellectual property. Of course we love free access to information -- the more the better. For years, those of us who are information junkies have been like pigs in mud. It has been fun, but those something-for- nothing days are over. There is a difference between the Internet mantra that "information loves to be free" and free information."
There is a large talent pool in the world, Salon. Use it. Big names are nice but big names are why you won't exist in a few years. The notion that talented writers only write if you lob a lot of money at them is just as false for the written word as it is for music.
My
Limekiller
I just went to salon and read a premium article. Here is my synopsis...
If a 10 second ad can keep salon and their reporters working I'm all for it. The US needs independent journalists. (Even if they sometimes say things you'd rather not hear. Personally I'm offended by something in Salon every single day. If I wasn't, I wouldn't bother to read it.)
Far left? *Far*?
Good God, has the spectrum in the US moved that far to the right?
Salon may be left/center, but I don't recall seeing any articles demanding redistribution of land in the US or violently returning the means of production to the proletariat. Far left is Revolution, my friend, where you don't publish people like David Horowitz, you string them up in the city square.
Far left? Jesus F Christ...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Everybody is asking, "How could an online magazine lose so much money" and everybody else is giving vague answers. According to their financial reports they seem to have trimmed down considerably this year, but looking at last year they were spending about a million a month on content and production, half a million on sales and marketing, $100k on research and development (??? you tell me) and about $400k on admin. That's $24 million a year right there. Losing $11 million/year doesn't seem so far-fetched.
What interests me is that each of the two top execs made $300k last year. Not bad pay for shovelling venture capital down a hole, eh?
When will it occur to Mercedes that anyone trying to save $12 a year in subscription costs probably isn't going out to buy a Mercedes?
Uh huh. And the code looks like this.
/* 1% chance of payment */
//if (Math.random() < 0.01) {
// return true;
//}
//return false;
// Fixed a bug (Bob - Marketing Department)
/** Decide if payment is required.
* @author Jim - IT Development
*/
public boolean isPayment {
return true;
}
How about -
Indymedia
BBC
or for some partial journalism / general questioning and sometimes odd, but certainaly not bland corp media
Michael Moore
DisInfo
then there are specialist sites for different topics -
Cryptome
Statewatch
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
What I have seen is this: No ads, combined with the knowledge that Slashdot still got paid anyway (thereby staying open), every time I hit their server. I don't really care very much if any new features ever get added or not.
That's all there is to it, and it's really that simple. I hate ads (and I fast-forward through them on my Tivo), and if I just filter, then someday Slashdot will cease to be (*). Without money, the wires that carry electricity and data would stop working, and then it would be over.
That would matter to be, because I have fun here. I learn things, I read funny things that make me laugh, I troll, I egotistically shout nonsense just to hear my own voice, I watch others do the same, and we all waste time together. That's all I ask for, so it's ok if that's all I get.
(*) How do I -- just one little guy using up half a cent credit with every page load -- possibly make that much difference? I don't know. If there are lots of people like me, then we'll add up to something. If there aren't many of us, then I hope someday maybe there will be. The basic principle is: if you want to change the world, you must first change yourself. Conduct yourself in the manner that you hope others conduct themselves. This is my strategy for keeping my playground open.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.