MediaFlect

If you’re an advertiser, Google History, which I wrote about yesterday, is the best thing since, well, there is no “since” because never before has an advertiser been able to potentially know all someone’s media activity and target ads based on it.

Google History tracks not only your Google searches but also, if you let it, all your Web surfing activity. Imagine the power of being able to target someone based on exactly what sites they’ve visited — even to weight the ads after guaging their level of interest, based on the sites they visited, how much they surfed each one, even which pages they went to within those sites — perhaps even how many links they clicked or what they did.

Here’s a little look at my Google History for one short period of time.

I looked up some software plugins, a New York media group, and Niagara Falls (my wife wants to visit the region this summer). Already, you know a lot more about me than you did, and if you wanted to target me with an ad you’d have some darn good ideas of what might work.

Yahoo’s going to give (sell, really) advertisers an application that lets them compare the effectiveness of their ad buys online vs. offline media. I imagine they believe the model will show how much more effective online advertising is. And that the “apples-to-apples” comparison of ad spends in different arenas another kick in the teeth for offline advertising.

Was over at the Digital Magazine Forum in New York yesterday, covering it for PaidContent.org, and Corante’s Rebuilding Media, where I’ll post today.

I think the B2B magazines are getting it, figuring out how to take an exisitng product and move it online, perhaps enhanced (Women’s Wear Daily - full disclosure: I helped relaunch their Web site), or sell info in newly envigorated ways (McGraw Hill Construction), or create Web sites that make plenty of money, especially in the tech space (PC World). But I fear for the consumer mags.

Don’t misunderstand. I have infinite admiration for how people at places like Conde Nast and Meredith and Rodale can make their publications such successes, selling millions in print and getting advertisers to pay big amounts to reach those audiences. But folks even at those companies acknowledge how much of a crap shoot it can be — witness the number of magazines that launch, then fold, every year, even at those companies (Vitals and Suede come to mind, and Mr. Magazine can give you plenty more).

At the same time, if they’re thinking of the Web in terms of purely selling print subscriptions, and overly worried about protecting print rather than getting as much from digital media as possible, they’re ultimately protecting a flank when their frontline troops are facing a juggernaut.

Newspapers have seen their classified ad revenue decline some $2 billion since jobs and cars and other classified sites came along, and Web sites are now getting traction in the kinds of mainstream consumer ads the magazines survive on. Eventually those products’ marketers, too, will start to demand the kinds of performance and metrics and reach and frequency and leads the Web can provide, rather than relying on ad exec promises of GRP. Those who have the right audience in the digital sphere, and can get the message of marketers out to them, will be in a better position to survive.

A little bit of horn-blowing for one of my other hats. Did a report for Borrell Associates about how the local space is heating up: Newspapers even in so-called destination cities (places people want to travel to) have largely ignored the tourism market, and a lot of other sites are picking off that revenue.

Meanwhile, a lot of hyper-locals are nibbling from another direction. And you’ve got the Googles and Craigslists trying to eat the main portion of the newspapers’ lunches. What newspapers won’t survive? How long before we see one or two newspapers in single-newspaper cities go under?

Lots more buzz about what classified advertising guru Peter Zollman is calling Google’s “all-out move” into the classfied advertising space. Seems the non-media media company has filed for a patent to control an application that would tie into other Google functionality, including the recently disclosed Google Base, to give full classified ad-like functionality to listings. For free, I assume?

One managerr of unaffiliated local sites that give listings for locals and tourists told me yesterday he thinks newspapers are going to start folding in five years, maybe ten. Wonder if he was reading this news.

Been talking to a bunch of owners of locally targeted sites that aren’t affiliated with any major media company, and am amazed by the profit margins: 50% in many cases. Almost pure revenue when they build new properties, and none of the zero-sum effect newspapers, TV or radio have, where dollars spent online steal from the mainstream property.

Hard to imagine how “legacy” media can compete in the space, unless they form a partnership. Or maybe there’s math I don’t understand.

Will say more about the report I’m working on relevant to this later.

NY Times wants to “build a site that can sustain that level of journalism” that supports $250 million budget and 1,200 journalists, says publisher Arthur Sulzberger, answering a question at the Online News Association about whether the Times plans to distribute its info or try to get people to the site.

It’s about “building the NY Times site,” which means, I guess, ads and other revenues that accrue from clicks, and not a more wire service model.

Information “does not yearn to be free. Opinion, quality opinion does not yearn to be free.”

Sulzberger just learned from an audience member that Cheney’s chief of staff Libby was indicted. “What am I doing talking to you?” he jokes, meaning he’ll have to head back to the office, I guess.

By now it’s oldish news that blog creator and aggregator Weblogs Inc., run by the irrepressible Jason Calacanis, is being bought by AOL, after flirtations with a lot of the other big players.

How did Calacanis’s network, home to leading tech-blog Engadget, and other blog powerhouses, get so big so fast, so he’s able to cash out only two years after creating it? One way is through careful and constant use, care and feeding of Google’s Ad Sense ads to maximize revenue. So good, in fact, that Google has done a case study to talk about how Calacanis did it. (Here’s a short piece on the study.) Another way, according to this piece, is by “gaming” blog-rating service Technorati by having all the blogs link and cross-link. Look in the lower right column of any of the Weblogs Inc. blogs, like Engadget, to see the list. But if that’s a crime, there are a LOT of guilty people, from pornographers to B2B sites and major media. (Perhaps it’s more incumbent on the folks writing the blog-crawling algorithms to correct for that, as search engines have corrected as best they can for “keyword packing.” It’s a constant challenge. But can we blame Weblogs for pointing us to its other properties?)

And, when I met Calacanis at the “We Media” conference a couple weeks ago, he told me the secret to his success, and how he’s managed in some instances to leapfrog rival Gawker Media run by Nick Denton: hire good bloggers and keep them. If they do well, and traffic is going up, keep giving them more money, so they’ll stay with Weblogs. Meaning, get good people, and treat them well. Comforting to hear a publisher say the way to gain audience that leads to financial success is by finding and rewarding talented journalists.

While we’re on the topic of blog networks: By way, Glam.com, a fashion blog network pointed out to me by TopButton.com, which I do work for, is being hailed as a sign that the VC money is back for real: Many are calling it the first “vertical” aggregation — a group of properties on a single topic area (fashion) — with serious money behind it since the go-go days.

This blog post, about three users of Treo phones bringing a class-action suit in California over how poorly the phone functions in their eyes is intriguing for two reasons I see:

One, the word Treo, itself, is linked to ads that sell the Treo. Forbes.com notably tried, then dropped the internal linking technique and others have written about the editorial vs. commercial problems with doing so. It could become the equivalent of product placement within journalism and serve to, over time, influence the product in nefarious ways. (”Say, John, could you throw the word Porsche into your story a few more times?”) This one is sort of sadly amusing as its whole theme is about how lousy the Treo is, yet you can click to buy one for only $179.

Secondly, I wonder, if this lawsuit gets any traction, what it might mean for technology, in general. If people can legitimately sue technology creators for making overarching promises — then, r’uh r’oh.

Joseph Jaffe was on the
Smart City radio show, touting his new book, “Life After the 30-Second Spot” and saying the things we all know to be true, but that marketers would rather not say or hear: We are getting really good at not consuming ads. We switch the station on radio, or use our TiVOs to go through them on TV, or flip past them in magazines, or block popups on the Web. (It’s always interesting to me how many of the people in TV ad sales departments have TiVOs at home and thus avoid seeing very the ads they’re selling that way.)

He made a few interesting points, both of which come from the content world, saying to be effective we need to model advertising after what’s been popular in content. He talked of “reality advertising,” getting real people’s testimonials, people who identify with or are passionate about a brand or product, how a blog with a simple post extolling the virtues of a product can be very powerful at promoting that product. And he talked about “advertising on demand,” saying, essentially that if the ads are good, and relevant we’ll want to watch them. For example, if you’re looking for a car you’ll want to find an ad for cars.

‘Brands have become engines of themselves, but they need to become enablers,” he said. You can listen to the show here.