Online advertising in the newspaper industry

[ladotcom]

I am curious to see what other papers are doing to sell online. I work for a rather large company in fact we are one of the largest newspaper groups today.

For whatever reason print reps are scared to sell online because they automatically think they don't understand it or that it is too difficult. What is so difficult? Isn't advertising all about reach and frequency? Does it matter if it is print, radio, television or internet?

The bigger the mousetrap the better right?

[cwiley]

I too, work for a very large newspaper group. We've developed a "super user" program for selected print reps to be trained by one of our online specialists. We've found that the only difficult part was the lingo then apply the reach and frequency of the hits and specific targets of all of our websites.
The super user program is 2-hours each week for 8 weeks. We teach them lingo, snag-it, dart, reporting, media needs analysis, creative best practices and how to sell the media as a whole...including print in the online campaign proposals. It's working and then these super users share this information with other print reps within their groups.

[jdren]

As a Internet Development Manager for a large news paper medium in Northern Minnesota, for those that have been soley in print advertising, stepping up to online advertising can be a bit of a challenge for some. I am in charge of 4 online newspapers and you can visit them to see the kind of advertisng that we have found to be successful. you can visit http://www.virginiamn.com to get a feel as to what we are doing in our local area.

Kindest regards - J Dren

[MediaSalesPro]

Originally Posted by jdren

As a Internet Development Manager for a large news paper medium in Northern Minnesota, for those that have been soley in print advertising, stepping up to online advertising can be a bit of a challenge for some. I am in charge of 4 online newspapers and you can visit them to see the kind of advertisng that we have found to be successful. you can visit http://www.virginiamn.com to get a feel as to what we are doing in our local area.

Kindest regards - J Dren

I found your website very impressive from an advertising perspective. Flash ads, colorful, display ads, classified categories with a large selection in many categories, yellow page application and much more. Healthy revenue stream? Nice work!

[ProSales51]

It is interesting to here some of the comments made by newspaper reps who also can sell online advertising when they run into objections from their advertising clients for print when they are questioned about the cost of placing the ads online. Obviously this redirects us back to the inherent problem in some reps minds as to the value of the visitors to the papers website. It basically comes down to a cpm based value. If the ratio of cost per unique visitor to a newspaper website is rated on the same basis as the cpm for either paid subscribers or readers per paper I believe most would find that the online advertising offered by most newspapers is very low cost. As the Ad Director for a small daily I certainly find this to be true in our case.
Some things never change, i.e.the perception is reality. This means that our reps have to believe and be able to convey that belief in their presentations so that the advertiser understands the value of his investment in promoting his or her business. I mean, come on why would anyone selling newspaper advertising ever want to sell advertising to any client that they didn't think was going to help their client grow their business. If you knowingly do this you are being very short sighted and your career will be a constant battle against churning customers and replacing those who are no longer in business. I would like to hear what others think about this subject. Sorry, I think I have let my view of Online advertising spill over into my sales philosophy. Here's to Happy Holidays & Prosperous New Years.

[frank doughton]

I work in Real Estate advertising for a newspaper group. The National Association of Realtors study indicates most new home searches begin online. This statement from the Realtor's major "mouthpiece" has opened the door for our team. It is still not easy, but the weight and credibility of this organizations goes a long way in getting in the door.