Chris pointed out a great article today in the Wall Street Journal exploring the situation of many newspapers as they are struggling to master local online advertising. A few factors are at play with this struggle; but big picture, newspapers suffer from cannibalistic revenue -- the idea that if one segment of their business gains revenue it is likely coming out of the other business arm. For example, a car dealer buys online ads and pulls back their print ad budget with the same newspaper. So why as a marketer would I do this? One reason is that people think of a newspaper's website as a destination and online marketers are focused on winning searches not being a sidenote on a website that they are already advertising to the same audience in the print version (note the chart to the left with 53.3% spent with Internet Companies).So what's a newspaper to do? Win organic search. In the spirit of "if you can't beat them, join them."
If I (as a newspaper) win local searches I now am not only selling my subscription base to the advertisers, but also selling the 'general public' as potential impressions or conversions to the advertisers. I have changed my 'product'. The newspaper also increases its page views and traffic and can charge more for the same ad space. It really can work and make sense...imagine this situation: A personsearches "Atlanta Business News"; is brought to a blog via search that is only focused on "Atlanta Business News"; has a great user experience and notices an ad for "Low Cost Business Furniture" on the blog, clicks and converts. The furniture store is now able to target a larger audience than going at it alone and has also associated itself with a generally respected newspaper that has plenty of content to win organic searches through a corporate blogging strategy.
