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Newspaper Ad Network Shuns Google, Yahoo, MS
Ian Lamont writes "The New York Times, and the Tribune, Gannett, and Hearst companies have launched their own ad network, called QuadrantOne. It will let advertisers place ads on media sites in 27 major markets, and let them target readers by content type, demographic information, and online behavior. Notably absent from the deal: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Both Google and Yahoo have their own ad networks focused on newspapers, but, as the article says, 'if newspapers develop better ways to sell their own online ads, they may not have to share revenue with their Web counterparts such as Yahoo and Google.'"
One one hand, the last thing that my life needs is more sources of advertising to clutter life up.
On the other hand is a glove... wait..
No, on the other hand is the fact that this creates competition in the online advertising arena. I had not thought that to be a problem before, but so it goes. Let them at it. It will either help keep print media afloat a bit longer or send them down the toilet that much faster.
Personally, I'm all for having a bit more competition in the op-ed and fact-checking areas of mainstream media... MAYBE... and I'm only saying MAYBE one of the MSM outlets will attempt to keep themselves alive and relevant by becoming a TRUSTWORTHY source of news...
I'm sure I'll wake up soon and wonder what this dream was all about, so go back to your regularly scheduled programming. Have you ever wondered why they didn't just say program? or show? or entertainment?
Freudian slip perhaps?
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What's a newspaper?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Apparently, the news industry is hurting. But the problem is that anymore they are all the same. More and more, they all spout the same thing, and will not cover what is news worthy (bad reporting, spin, whatever). These days, I have been turning overseas to find out exactly what America is up to, and then MIGHT see the article buried about a month later. That is NOT how we are suppose to get the story. This AM got into a discussion with another about reporting and at some point it was mentioned that if not spin, then it was shoddy reporting. For the last 5 years, I have seen nothing but increasingly shoddy reporting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That makes sense.
A big problem with Google's "content network" is that most of the ad sites have no real content. The newspaper industry at least has something worth attaching ads to. Google is taking a 50% cut of ad revenue without doing very much for it.
This may push Google ads towards the "bottom feeder" made-for-Adwords sites, especially if the news media become very aggressive about going after anyone copying their content. This will make thosse ads much less valuable; that's where the low-value clicks come from.
Open Adblock control - insert domain... and there you have it, another empty space where annoyance used to be :D
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
I gleefully welcome the destruction of the mainstream media. Why? Despite touting itself as a watchdog, the media is quite possibly the single biggest enemy that "democracy" and liberty have in the United States. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that whatever can be said of Bush and Cheney, the mainstream media beats them by a wide margin. It doesn't criticize the government except a few politicians, it almost never holds corrupt and abusive government employees accountable, and it rarely provides a voice for actually holding the government by the short hairs and making it fess up.
There is a case that, for me, was the last straw. It was written in the Pilot, which is a major Virginia media outlet. I have a write up here showing how much of a f$%^ing lapdog the media was in not questioning how the police carried out this raid. The reports have only gotten worse, including it appears to be that the police conducted this raid after knowing that their own informant committed a felony against the poor guy by breaking into his home 3 days before the raid (might explain why he was trigger happy when the police raided the house 3 days later at night while he was in bed).
The media has two modes when it comes to their traditional role of watchdog: lapdog and psychotic attack dog that turns on the children. They'll either damn near cover stuff up, or make a mountain out of a molehill, when there are plenty of good examples that would get the public furious for good reasons.
What is this? Some bullshit concept of "journalist ethics and social responsibility" at work? I don't buy the corporate angle that much because if they reported half of the shit that makes it to civil libertarian blogs and kept up with it, they'd have more naturally occurring controversy to sell ads with than the law should allow.
So, I say bring it on to the mainstream media. There are plenty of lightweight media outlets that aren't barely more than Associated Press resellers, and they're going up against Craigslist, a 800lb gorilla in the classifieds market now.
Newspapers, as a medium for delivering news, are dying. However the newsrooms that create content for the papers are crucial to the journalism industry, because they don't exist in any other media. TV news is fast, get some visuals, talk to a few folks and get it all done by 6:00pm. Newspaper journalists can pour more investigation and actual news reporting into a 2 column story than some anchorbabe can read on a teleprompter in 30-40 seconds.
The newspaper has to be kept alive, and if they figure out how to successfully produce enough revenue to continue to publish on the Web, great. But when you think about how much the work newspapers do influences all the other media, you start to wonder what how the profession as a whole would suffer if newspapers died out altogether.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
From the http://www.quadrantone.com/ site:
"Access to sophisticated audience targeting by context, behavior and demographics".
I can see how they can target by context (selling to specific websites), but how can they target by behavior or demographics? Will they be looking at the cookies on user machines to try to determine behavior? How will they get demographic information?
I assume you mean that the *paper* delivery method is dying. As news gathering organizations, "newspapers" will survive (at least those that adapt.)
I canceled my subscription to my local newspaper around 1998, when they began putting their content online. I still use them as a source for news, however.
I'll be the first to say that the present state of the news media is sad. Still, there will always be a place for professional news gathering organizations.
The New York Times is dying.
Even the New York Times confirms it.
I don't block Google ads because Google has avoided obnoxious ads. I won't block Q1 ads unless they decide to make them obnoxious (e.g. flash, animations, large, pop ups, etc). Given the history of the newspaper business not keeping up with the world, I worry that I may end up having to block them. Then I'd become some kind of news freeloader.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"target readers by content type, demographic information, and online behavior."
Yeah, OK. When I created logins for the NYT and the Washington Post websites, I'm pretty sure I told them I was born in 1901, live in ZIP code 90210, and am female.
Good luck with that advertising, guys.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Google is KNOWN for their search engine and for how targeted their ads are between the end viewer AND the site. In the denver post or rocky mountain news, when I see ads beside some article, they have NOTHING to do with the content. ABsolutely nothing. I noticed that when I was reading about the butchery at NIU, that I was being shown ads about dating women on the east coast. I am not single, and I have nothing to do with the east coast, and what does dating have to do with an idiot running around murdering ppl? All in all, the newspaper have less and less news, and unless they hire some good ppl on, even their ads will remain worthless. Off hand, I believe that the "news" papers are heading towards being the bottom feeders.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I read some of the comments and it seems like people are saying that this is a desperate attempt to save the newspaper industry. I don't think it's desperate at all - I think it's actually a wise choice. The players are engaging in what's called a "vertical market" - in case anyone overlooked this fact - in order to serve the needs of the core business.
They're not trying to save the ship: they're building a better ship.
"It was hell!" recalls former child.