On a recent Backwards Gang episode of the Gillmor Gang (hard to tell which one eh?), Jason argues about AdSense being more like Direct Marketing and that it will be the incumbent form of marketing for next few decades. He also touches upon the YouTube/AdSense relationship at his blog
Well, he’s partially right but he’s missing one important part of the recipe.

I agree that AdSense is more like Direct Marketing than advertising and  it’s way more efficient than prior forms af advertising given that it’s pay-per-click.
The important piece of the puzzle that Jason is missing is the quality list, something of a cornerstone for Direct Mail or Email advertising.
A better list is a better open-rate, and a bigger ROI.

The fact that AdSense is only contextual is a shortcoming, and for both Google and the advertisers, making it more efficient will make more money for each respectively.

Despite it being pay-per-click, more click-throughs mean more revenue for both Google and the advertiser.

Where is the quality list in AdSense?

You could argue that it’s in the context of the web page, but this is only superficially true.

To rev things up, or “press on the gas,” as Jason would say, a bit of behavioral targeting needs to be added to the mix.

Get more of these ads in front of people who really want them, or are at a particular point of the buying cycle and your CTRs will go up, and revenue will follow.

This can all work in conjunction with contextual data, but will enhance contextual delivery immensely.

So while I agree with Jason’s prediction that AdSense will dominate for years to come, I think Google must improve upon it, or else risk losing marketshare to a behaviorally enhanced version of adsense that may provide a similar ROI, but in a condensed amount of time, which equates to money.

If Jason thinks that Google will rise to Microsoft levels of dominance in this space, they are going to have to address the quality list or lead, in this case, by the use of behavioral targeting.

I think they will. In fact, I think  it will be an integral part of their Cost-Per-Action experimentation that began when the rumblings about click-fraud were at a peak.

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Doc gives a bit of advice to newspapers. Some great ones, a few of which I’ve mentioned here before. My favorite:

Fourth, start following, and linking to, local bloggers and even competing papers (such as the local arts weeklies). You’re not the only game in town anymore, and haven’t been for some time. Instead you’re the biggest fish in your pond’s ecosystem. Learn to get along and support each other, and everybody will benefit.

The shark doesn’t eat the remora. Likewise, the big media companies shouldn’t compete with the bloggers, but recognize their importance.

Also of note, Doc mentions the controversy happening out in LA with ther LATimes publisher. And now he’s out  .

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Interesting article. I’d read the whole thing.

In short, a bunch of anonymous claims that online folks should have a greater leadership role in newspaper organizations.

They are speaking mostly of editorial, but I’d say it’s even more important for the business/strategy side to be run by folks who grasp the technology. After all, if you don’t understand something like RSS, how can you envision using it to make money, or even realize it’s the most important initiative we have in front of us. There is no getting around the fact that we are managing a software product.

Like Gretzky said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

On a more immediate note, the article touches upon something I’ve been debating for a while.

“. . .We live in a Google economy, where a wealth of news and information is at our fingertips. There’s simply too much available, so easily and free, for it to make sense for most news companies to charge for most of their content. ”

Which makes me think, I strongly believe that if every article newspapers ever published online was still available at it’s original location, their monthly traffic would be double what it is today. Maybe more.

I see no reason why ad programs like Google would not scale monetarily with traffic, which means they’d probably be  bringing in double  the amount of revenue from those programs.

Which leads to the question of whether  that sum would be  greater than the potential sum of sold archives. I think it would be, but time will tell.

In addition, there is the unmeasurable other 99.99% of the visitors to those pages that won’t click a google ad, but appreciate our content being available.

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Joshua Porter points to an interview he did with Luke Wroblewski of Functioning Form about Visual Design.

It’s a great read, but one idea in particular came to me after I read the following,

To bring it back to the design process, even if you deliberately don’t consider  your site’s personality, it will end up with one anyway. The colors, content,  and visual elements—or lack thereof—all make an impression on your audience, intentional or not. Therefore, it is in your best interests to be aware of  the personality you are creating for your site and make certain it is sending  a message you want.

I, and many others, have wondered why MySpace is so popular despite having inferior design to many other sites.

Well, sex, drugs and rock n roll is one answer, but that’s not what I mean.

Could it be that the personalities expressed by these MySpace pages are the personalities of average citizens, not web developers, marketing professionals or media folks of any kind?

Some like Hotel lounges, others like Dance clubs, Pubs, or clean kitchens. Inferior design here takes the personality of “friend,” whereas professional design bespeaks Media company.

That’s a place to get news or blockbuster movies, but not a place to hang out.

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Frank Gruber points to Fred Wilson, who says that MySpace is the “AOL of Blogging.”

Frank, who recently joined AOL in the Product Development area for blogging and RSS, agrees a bit, but I think he neglects to point out the most important point that Fred brings up.

It’s something I’ve been saying about MySpace for a while and it’s very relevant to Tribune (where Frank and I met) and other newspaper and media sites trying to embrace social networking.

The point is, that if MySpace tries to create a walled-garden like AOL did, at some point their users will awaken and the MySpace service will either begin a slow decline, or they will recognize it and open up, like AOL did recently.

And so far, it’s looking like AOL did the right thing.

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Anyone in the Newspaper/Web business is aware of print-to-web products. Here is an example from the Allentown Morning Call.

The idea is that these special sections, which are often(but not always) advertorial, are put online in an awkward format, but since advertisers are willing to pay an upsell fee, it can end up being a decent percentage of the online revenue.

Something like that. It varies.

A more horrific example is when the print product is emulated with a Flash flipbook.

I think it’s high time that newspapers ended this ridiculous practice. It’s harming their reputation by making them look clueless in the online marketing arena.

If you want to offer the PDF of the print product, do so. But let’s not feign to be doing anything for our print advertisers by throwing this crap up. The usability is so horrible, it is of practically no value to the users, which means it can’t be of any value to the advertisers.

It’s no wonder that local online advertising is a hard sell. It’s been presented in a way that lacks any real value and the advertisers sense that.

Sure, it might hurt in the short-run, but maybe it doesn’t have to. Offer the advertisers an option to do some “real” online marketing with that forced upsell.

The real issue is the conflict of interest of saving declining print revenues, while trying to build online ones, as I mentioned about classified ads in my last post.

This conflict includes circulation revenue, as pointed out by Richard Addis, and expounded upon by Jeff Jarvis. I’ll only add to their points that circulation revenue covers print and distribution costs. When those costs are largely removed, there is no need to pass them on to user, and that’s the reason why web content is free.

At one point someone got it into their head that people were paying content. They weren’t. They were paying for print and distribution costs.

And all of this really goes back to my point about the value of the distribution channel.

When you control the channel, which could be the press, or it could be a cable box or a radio frequency, that channel has value.

When the channel is a commodity like the web, your content doesn’t necessarily become less valuable, but all other content is potentially equally valuable.

That means that you need to change the way you create content and do business. I hate to quote myself, but  I think an old post of mine was on the right track.

I once had an editor tell me that the value of our newspaper’s organization was in the process we had created for producing good journalism.

Not so.

For newspapers, the business value was that they owned a press, and therefore a distribution channel, not in any of the journalism that resulted.

Read that carefully. I’m not saying there was no value in the journalism. It held tremendous value. It still does.

That editor, though, was not giving due credit to the medium. The product which is created is a direct result of the medium which it is created for. Remember your Mcluhan, folks.

I rushed this post do to a busy schedule, but I think the conclusion is somewhat clear.

Newspapers need to free themselves of the baggage that is weighing down their online strategies. Let print be print, and online be online, and don’t let one hinder the other.

May the best man win.

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Jarvis notes the changing role of journalists:

A change of the role of journalists — and their relationship with the public — from owner sof the story to moderators, editors, enablers, and educators.

Networked news is good, but “SharedNews” is better. Well, that’s just a term I coined some time back to talk about two-way RSS or what might be called RSS Groups.

This is where everyone has access to a feed, much like an email or usenet group. It’s a more sophisticated way to structure a group blog, and it can be completely distributed. Check out SkinnyFarm for an example.

I’ll remind Jeff about a post he wrote about SSE , and I commented on it.

If RSS is two-way, like it can be, then networked news collaboration can be taken to a much higher level.

I’m digressing somewhat, because the real issue here is that news organizations must realize they need to approach the conversation from a peer level.

It’s no longer a lecture, where audience members must raise their hand to contribute. It’s one big dinner party, and no-one likes the guy who tries to dominate the conversation.

That’s why Dave Winer is right about exclusivity. There is an implicit understanding that we are all equal on the web, and any attempts to create a class system will fail. Exclusive 2.0 conferences are making the same mistake that the Old Regimes made.

It’s also why the user-generated content strategies of news organizations are driving me nuts.

By it’s nature, it’s treating the site-user as a lesser voice.

It’s as if newspapers think users will feel priveliged to get their stuff on the organization’s website.

While that may be somewhat true for the New York Times, I don’t think the local newspaper in many towns holds that kind of reverence, especially with the younger follks.

Their friends are more impressed with their MySpace page, than with your poorly designed, million dollar content management system.

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I’m a strong believer in the disintermediation of classified ads, which is partially why I chose the name of this blog.

In fact, I heralded Edgeio as a sign of what was to come, especially to the CareerBuilder people I work with.

So, like James Corbett, I was confused by Mike Arrington’s wording of “decentralised job board for tech” , as you can see by my comment on the CrunchNotes post.

Here is the way decentralization for job sites must work.

1. Companies make RSS feeds of their sites available.

2. A decentralized but comprehensive OPML directory of jobs is wrought.

3. The directory is available under an open license.

That’s really all there is to it. And there will still be plenty of ways for service providers to make money.

Now if I were Mike Arrington, I’d continue the lucrative site he’s got. I think that’s great.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with adding those feeds to the Open Job Directory as well. (OPML heads can go to the directory , but it’s all OPML 2.0 inclusion, so you better Grazr it.)
Since the majority of jobs in the Open Job Directory are from paid listing sites, it looks like just another aggregator. But that’s not true. It includes feeds from O’Reilly, Edelman and even Edgeio (OPML) .

And once a critical mass of Businesses are publishing their job feeds, it’ll make those paid-listing sites irrelevant.

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My big push this week was for full-text feeds in the RSS feeds from all Tribune newspapers sites.

Not a new argument by any means but . . .(cue up quotable excerpt)
In the light of the blogosphere going apeshit over Dave’s “mobile river of news,” I think it’s more critical than ever that media companies stop clinging to the out-dated page-view model and begin offering full-text feeds.

Added: See what I mean? If we concentrate on relationships and not traffic, we will get paid more. Huh? The doctor uses a scalpel not a cave-man club. Whuh? The graduate student studies The Battle of Gettysburg, the 8th grader studies American History (And never gets past World War I). Is it clear now?

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Marc Canter predicts that five more roach motels will open their doors by Christmas, pressured by the clever Facebook move to offer APIs .

It certainly won’t happen by Christmas, but I’ve pleaded with others involved in product development that the Tribune family of newspaper sites offer APIs, especially as we ramp up aggregation and user-generated content.

If newspapers are serious about getting a piece of the social network pie, which includes photos, blogs and video produced and shared by its users, then they had better think about how they are going to share that content back with the network, or else they will also be one step behind, like MySpace is to Facebook.

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