Month: July 2016

Affiliate Summit East

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We’ve covered Affiliate Advertising here on the Print Observer blog in the past…

Here: “Customer Acquisition: Using Online and Offline Affiliate Marketing to Generate New Customers”

And here: “Affiliate Marketing – Changing Marketers Expectations of Advertising Results”

At Mediabids, we’re uniquely positioned to help advertisers complement their online affiliate programs with our affiliate print program which allows advertisers to pay per response for reaching new customers and prospects in newspapers and magazines.

Our program which includes our exclusive network of thousands of print publications provides a performance-based model through which advertisers can drive calls and sales.

To learn more go to: https://www.mediabids.com/

We’ll be at Affiliate Summit East this coming Monday in NYC.  For any advertisers or partners looking to connect, please email Darcy Mauke at dmauke@mediabids.com.

Have News Publishers Become Dangerously Dependent on Facebook?

Social media 2 thumbs up likes

In an interesting post on The Monday Note the author Frederic Filloux outlined the tough spot news publishers have found themselves in when it comes to distributing their content on Facebook.

On the one hand, content producers need all the article distribution and eyeballs they can get, and Facebook provides them, en masse. According to Filloux, “Today, Facebook drives about 40% of all referrals and Google drives about 35%.” That’s an insane amount of referral traffic, and much the reason why newspapers and magazines started using Facebook’s “Instant Articles” platform to publish content directly to users. That, and the fact that Instant Articles purported to provide the reader with a better, faster article loading experience to aid in ease of reading. Ideally, this would provide a huge amount of traffic to the articles, and eventually provide ad revenue either via the publisher’s site direct or through Facebook Ads itself.

Alas, it seems things may not be working out as planned on the publisher side, as Facebook recently changed their News Feed algorithm to display news from friends and family first, while lowering the priority of Instant Articles. Essentially, publishers can post articles all day long, but Facebook ultimately controls how many people, and exactly who, the content will be display to.

How publishers will react to this remains to be seen. Have they become so dependent on the Facebook traffic that they will pay the increasingly high ad prices to maintain and grow the audience they’ve been working to engage? Facebook hopes so. Will they pull back on Instant Articles and refocus on different distribution methods? A definite possibility.

If you’ve thought about publishing via Instant Articles, we’d highly recommend you read Filloux’s piece on the tenuous relationship between Facebook & content providers – it is very insightful. Find his full post here: https://mondaynote.com/news-publishers-facebook-problem-6752f1c35037#.bjqhs54ze

Post by Jess Greiner

Open Letter to Media Buyers & Marketers

newspaper machine

Is this picture of newspaper boxes kind of how you think of print? …dreary, old, outdated?

C’mon. Be honest. This is a safe space here.

As a media buyer, agency exec or client-side marketer, the way you think about print media has an enormous impact on the newspaper and magazine industry.

There was yet another sour report today about print revenues. First quarter 2016 newspaper and magazine revenues were down another 3.5-4.5% YOY.

I know many of you have moved on to digital and probably haven’t given much thought to print advertising for some time. I know and it’s not entirely your fault. After all, it’s tough to not follow the herd when the stakes and demands are so high. It’s also especially tough, when you may not know better.

By largely turning our backs on print (and instead pouring dollars into digital display) we’ve missed a huge opportunity to be heroes.

Mediabids Conversion

This chart shows close rates and the average length of calls for a few of our advertisers that deliver the highest call volumes. To be clear, the decimal point is in the correct place. All of our conversion rates start with TWO numbers before the decimal point.

By comparison, here’s the latest conversion rates for digital display ads.

Digital Display Click Thru Rates

If you’ve been spending time in digital media, these conversion rates are very familiar and may be the norm. From my perspective, these conversion rates are just north of ”why bother?”

Print advertising is a huge opportunity to deliver real results and value to your clients. If you haven’t already, perhaps it’s time to update your view of print media.

Sincerely,

Jim Jinks

Fact Checking ”Truthiness”

Trump PinochioStephen Colbert famously coined the term ”truthiness” to describe the way politicians often say things that are at best only half-true. Working in advertising, where we are held to a relatively high standard pertaining to ”truth” (not to mention subject to laws and official government oversight), the nature of advertising in politics -with its loose relationship to facts- has always been particularly frustrating to me, both as a voter and professional marketer. As a society, why do we demand more from our commercial advertisers than our politicians?

It’s a big question and I will not be attempting to answer it here. One thing is for sure, ”truth” isn’t exactly easy to define. Often it’s the case that our truth is simply what we choose to believe. But, of course, we can’t simply let politicians entirely off the hook.

Hillary 2016

While there isn’t an Federal Trade Commission (FTC) looking over the shoulder of political campaigns and consultants, in recent years there has emerged a strong vein of fact checking (even an industry, really) including newspaper and non-profit organizations. The next time you’re curious about the facts behind statements and/or advertising from one of the major candidates, these are the four most widely noted fact checkers:

Factcheck.org

Politifact.com

Sunlightfoundation.com

Poynter.org

 

Post by Jim Jinks

 

3 Studies Showing the Effectiveness of Print Advertising

It Works Effective Strategy Plan Advice Red Grunge Stamp

Yesterday, print ads that we ran for our MediaBids clients generated 2,000 phone calls from interested consumers. Two-thousand living, breathing people across the US studied these print ads, and made the calculated decision to pick up the phone. We see this kind of activity from newspaper and magazine ads everyday, and we’re not the only ones that still believe in print. Take a look at a few studies that show print advertising is still alive:

1.) Study Reveals Advertising With Newspaper Triples Campaign Effectiveness– This interesting study out of the UK  released last week reports that “On a sector by sector basis, the research found that adding newspapers to a campaign increases effectiveness by 5.7 times for finance; three times for travel; 2.8 times for retail; 1.7 times for automotive.” Impressive numbers.

2.) GFK MRI Research Study – 61% of readers take action after seeing a print magazine ad – Whether it’s clipping a coupon, making a purchase or gathering more information about an advertiser, magazine readers are spurred to action when they see an ad that interests them.

3.) Nielson Study Shows Newspaper Ads Lead in Engagement – Newspaper ads are viewed as both trustworthy and engaging. “The central focus of the study is engagement, and, in the aggregate score for eleven metrics of engagement, print or online newspapers scored 43 percent, followed by TV stations and their websites at 37 percent. Radio and Internet both received 41 percent.”

Whether you’re looking to drive traffic to a website or call center, print ads are still a useful tool in driving awareness and engagement.

The Pokemon Observer

Pokemon

It’s Friday afternoon. It’s the middle of Summer. Let’s have some fun for Peet’s sake!

Just for today, instead of the Print Observer, this is the ”Pokemon Observer.”

Pokemon Go

I know. I know. The Pokemon Go thing is in all out ”jump the shark” mode at this point (even though it’s only a week old.) I haven’t downloaded the app (and don’t plan to) but the news about it has been entertaining to say the least.

Here’s a list of a few of the best Pokemon Go ”news” reports from the past week:

Waiter There’s a Squirtle in My Soup

I was a Normal Person with a Life Until…

So, Uh, the President of Israel is Playing…

How to type the e…

Pokemon Go player Walks Right Through…

NASA Can We Play Pokemon Go In Space?

Sorry…did you say Pokemon nudes?

Is Pokemon Go an ”alien mind-control plot?”

Hope everyone is having a swell Friday, whether you like the Pokemon thing or not.

Post by Jim Jinks.

Marketing Podcasts: Less Pain, More Gain.

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If you’re a local media salesperson it’s important to not only know everything there is to know about what you’re selling but you also need to know what your customers may be thinking, in terms of their marketing options and ideas.

As professional marketers, it’s tough for us to keep up with all the new technology and marketing opportunities that arrive on the scene at an ever increasing pace. Imagine how your small business customers feel? In addition to running their business, they get bombarded by media salespeople in their local market as well as emails and online offers from all the social media and digital channels. The options, opportunities and trends are likely to be overwhelming to most small business owners and managers…or at least make them feel like it’s tough to keep up and make an informed decision on where to best invest marketing dollars.

One thing a local media salesperson can do is attempt to be THE authoritative voice for their small business customers. I know what you’re thinking. Who could possibly have the time to read marketing books or spend valuable prospecting time following ”thought-leaders” on social media or participating in webinars. I get it! Especially as a salesperson, your time is valuable and you’re judged by closing sales (not how smart you are about marketing.)

Recently I’ve been thinking, how can I get smarter about marketing without committing time I don’t really have in the first place? Then I thought…what about a podcast (or two?) There are very few podcasts that are household names. Check that, with the possible exception of Serial (https://serialpodcast.org/) there are no podcasts that are household names. So how or where to get started?

Admittedly, this wasn’t exactly scientific:

  1. I did a Google search of ”top marketing podcasts.”
  2. Based on seven different rankings from people that purportedly listened to all (or most) of the podcasts in the marketing podcast universe, there were five marketing podcasts that appeared in ALL of the rankings.
  3. If you’re looking to become a smarter marketer in less time (and be your customer’s marketing guru) then these would likely be a great place to start:

#AskGaryVee

Beancast Marketing

Six Pixels of Separation

Marketing Over Coffee

Social Media Marketing Podcast

Have a listen and please let us know what you think in the comments section below. I hope you find these enjoyable and valuable.

Post by Jim Jinks

 

 

 

 

 

4 Ways Newspapers Can Stay in the Game

The success of local community newspapers is one of the sentiments we at MediaBids highlight here in the PrintObserver (see here: All Advertising is Local, here: The Definition of Truth, here:  The Future of Hyperlocal News, and here: The Top 5 Reasons Community Newspapers are Thriving).  But that doesn’t mean that newspapers – local, regional, and national – should not be open to adapt their business plans to adjust to industry trends.

Here are 4 ways newspapers can stay in the game:

  1. Remember, content is king – One of the main historic benefits of newspapers is the value of their journalism and the quality of their reporting.  In an age where consumers have unlimited options as to where to get their news and information, newspapers must continue to be a beacon of truth and source of thought-provoking editorial.  Much of the value of a newspaper’s brand is in their trustworthiness and this is an asset worth capitalizing upon.  While many recent turnarounds can be attributed to cost-cutting, this cannot come at the expense of editorial excellence or else readership (and thus, revenue) will not be long to follow.
  2. Be genuine – In recent months, we’ve seen critics rip apart Tribune’s announcement to re-brand themselves as Tronc.  You can’t simply throw around buzzwords and slap the word “optimization” on everything.
  3.  Focus on core competencies – Along with the arrival of digital display and programmatic advertising, we’ve seen some newspapers try to transform into an agency of sorts; acting as the liaison for local clients into the world of advertising beyond just their pages.  We’ve seen this have varying degrees of success, but if this is going to be your approach, make sure your sales reps are well-trained to handle questions, objections, and execution of campaigns in alternate mediums.
  4. Newspapers need to recognize and adapt to the fact that their advertisers want trackable results.  Data-driven decision making is a powerful part of marketing today and advertisers have grown accustomed to information-rich platforms.  Beyond touting the quality of your readership, newspapers need to be willing to be part of the conversation on response and ROI/ROAS.  Accountability is paramount.

Whether your analysis of future trends predicts the “death of print” or you have a more optimistic view, one thing we can all agree on is that newspapers will have to be adaptable to survive the ever-evolving media landscape.  We generally try to shine a light on positive news in the industry since the pessimistic voices are often booming loud and clear around us, but that doesn’t mean newspapers should continue down the tunnel with blinders on.

Post by Darcy Mauke

2.7 Billion Adults Read Newspapers in Print

According to the latest annual World Press Trends survey issued by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), 2.7 Billion adults worldwide read newspapers in print.

Source

Circulation growth can mainly be attributed to gains made in Asia – in China and India in particular.  The largest newspaper markets are the US, Japan, Germany, China, the UK, India and Brazil.  Print circulation increased 4.9% overall in 2015 over 2014.

In a separate study on advertising effectiveness, newspaper ads have reportedly influenced 13.1% of US adults to make a purchase in the past 6 months whereas social networking ads have only influenced 10.3%.

92% of newspaper revenues are derived from print.

For help reaching your target audience via print, contact us at info@mediabids.com or at 860-379-9602.

Post by Darcy Mauke

 

New Performance Print Advertiser: Pillpack

pillpack

MediaBids is happy to welcome Pillpack to its Performance Print Advertising Program!

Pillpack is a revolutionary new US pharmacy that makes managing your prescriptions and taking medication easier and safer than ever before.

Pillpack pays publishers for each qualifying call the ad generates. If your readership relies on prescription medication, this ad could be  great new revenue driver for you.

Click Here to request an ad, or call 1-860-379-9602 for more information.