The Print Observer – Newspaper & Magazine Advertising Insights
Newspaper and magazine advertising insights, commentary and analysis.
If you’re a publisher or advertising executive new to performance print advertising – or would like a refresh on how MediaBids works – this video provides a short overview of how MediaBids will deliver ads from top brands + additional revenue to your publication.
Creating a MediaBids account for your publication is free and easy. If you have questions or need assistance, please feel free to call us at 1-800-545-1135 or email info@mediabids.com.
So, you are running ads from Mediabids in your publication but your response is not what you had hoped? This is a frustrating problem, but there are some steps we can take to try to correct things.
First, ask yourself if the product or service being advertised is really a good fit for your readership. Sometimes publications choose ads from Mediabids because they like the payout, or like how the ad looks but are not paying attention to the single most important thing, which is do your readers want what is being advertised? There are several things to consider – is the price something that they can afford? Is the product or service being advertised relevant to your area and your readership’s needs? Generac Home Generators is a great campaign, but if your publication is in an area where the power never goes out, it probably won’t do very well.
Second, are there other parts of your publication where you can use the ad? Different people seek different types of content and it might be worthwhile to try the ad in a place where a different group of people, who are more likely to respond, might be looking. Classified sections, a TMC product, or on your website are all examples of sections within your publication that attract distinct audiences.
If you feel confident that the ad is right for your audience and it still is not getting results, then we have a different type of problem and the answer might be trying a different campaign. It is ok to switch campaigns and not every ad works in every publication, sometimes for reasons that are very hard to identify. By changing the ads you are running and observing the results that they generate, you can better identify what resonates with your audience. So to do this effectively – watch the weekly reports of your results that Mediabids sends and then at the end of the month, review your results carefully. If you are running an ad and it isn’t working, let’s try something different. The goal of Mediabids’ program is to make your publication money.
If you would like suggestions or to review the ads you are currently running, please contact us at www.MediaBids.com or 860-379-9602.
Join media/advertising sales expert Ernest F. Oriente, the founder of PowerHour, LLC and Jedd Gould, CEO of MediaBids for a free MediaBids PowerHour on Thursday, January 28 at 1 p.m. Eastern/New York time focused on “Trees Are Obstacles Or Opportunities?”
To Register for this Free Event, Click Here: Teleseminar Registration (mediabids.com)
Details are below for our 286th free educational PowerHour, since 1995.
Here is a short 90-second video to watch, tied to the upcoming teleseminar below:
During this 60-minute MediaBids PowerHour we will discuss the points below plus field your specific questions:
1. A = for your ATTITUDE. What shifts will you and your advertising sales team make/take, going into the new year?
2. A = for your APPROACH. What are the key advertising sales and marketing efforts vital for the first half of 2021?
3. A = for your ACCESS. What is your USP? What sets your ad platform apart from your direct competitors?
4. A = for your ANTICIPATION. Where is the optimism tied to the advertising trends we are tracking with our media clients around the world? Where are the best opportunities?
As prep for #2 above and to continue this discussion with ad sales leaders from around the world, please join our flagship LinkedIn group, Advertising Sales Success—with 4400+ leaders on this url: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2379105/
Registration Information
=================
When: Thursday, Jan. 28.
Please note, the above MediaBids PowerHour starts at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/New York/Toronto time, which is
12:00 p.m. Central/Dallas/Winnipeg time
11:00 a.m. Mountain/Denver/Calgary time
10:00 a.m. Pacific/San Francisco/Vancouver time
9:00 a.m. Alaska time
6:00 p.m. GMT/London time
Fee: No charge
Recording is available after the MediaBids PowerHour, but you must register below to receive it.
To register, please click here.
For additional registration information, please contact MediaBids.com at 800-545-1135 or E-mail jpeterson@mediabids.com
We look forward to having you join us,
Jedd Gould
www.mediabids.com
Come follow us on Twitter, https://twitter.com/Mediabids
And
The Coach,
Ernest Oriente
President of PowerHour, since 1995
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ernestoriente
Come follow us on Twitter, https://twitter.com/PowerHourCoach
Crown Maple is artisan quality, estate-grown maple syrup from Madava Farms and 800-acre organic, family farm, established in 2010 in New York’s Hudson Valley. In addition to maple syrup, their product line-up includes maple sugar, maple-infused condiments, maple-flavored snacks and craft beverages with Crown Maple.
This holiday season Crown Maple is offering three special gift options, each at 25% off! The three options include the ”Pancake Breakfast Gift Set,” the ”Bourbon Barrell Aged Organic Maple Syrup” and ”Infused Organic Maple Syrup Trio.” Customers can buy one or all three. Shipping and handling is only $5 per item. These are great gifts and a good value. Perfect for giving this holiday season to family, friends and associates.
We have display ads and a classified liner ad for this campaign. The ads are available in both color and BW. Visit Mediabids.com or call us at 1-800-545-1135 for more information and to request your Crown Maple ad today.
What a difference a year can make!
Over the past year something really notable and exciting has happened in response-based, national, print advertising. Per response payouts have gone up A LOT and more and better advertisers are moving into the industry.
In October 2018, among our set of advertisers, the average payout per response was $18.00. One year later the overall average has gone up to $27.00 – a 50% increase! But this isn’t even the most notable change year-over-year.
In October 2018, among our top ten highest payouts, the average payout per response was $46.00. One year later, the average payout per response, among our top ten highest paying advertisers is now pushing toward $100. The average is up 80% from one year ago and is now at $83 per response.
Our highest paying advertiser is now at $175 per qualified response. One year ago our highest paying advertiser was $100 per qualified response. That advertiser has since gone up to $115 per qualified response but this year-over-year increase is 75%. These trends are great for the industry and especially for publishers.
A big part of our role at Mediabids is to prove to advertisers what we’ve known for years – leads from print readers are the highest quality leads in direct-response advertising. Full stop. Print readers are more informed and thus are further down the conversion funnel, once they pick-up the phone to call an advertiser. These higher payouts from advertisers is proof that they’re finally getting the message and more importantly, seeing the results. As such we anticipate we’ll continue to see more advertisers be more aggressive with their per response payouts. In other words we don’t see these higher payouts as an inflation bubble that’ll burst. We expect to see payout continue to gradually move up across most verticals in national, per response, print advertising.
Current highest paying advertisers at Mediabids:
Shelf Genie
American Standard Walk Ins
LeafFilter
Andersen by Renewal
ADT Security
Acorn Stairlifts
MobileHelp
The Hartford-AARP
World Health Link
A Place for Mom
Visit www.Mediabids.com to view the ads for all of our campaigns, including the new Holiday 2019 campaigns we’ve just posted – Omaha Steaks, Hale Groves, Fairytale Brownies and others.
I tend to be a later adopter of things. I’m not a luddite by any means. But I still prefer CDs for music. I mean c’mon, the sound is far better than digital listening. I also still prefer newspapers and magazines in print rather than digital formats. I absolutely much prefer an actual book to an audio or reader version.
But I’m no luddite. Case in point, I listen to podcasts. Fact check: I listen to A LOT of podcasts.
I still haven’t listened to ”Serial,” the podcast that seemed to put podcasting on the map. But I do listen to other popular podcasts such as NYT’s ”The Daily,” ”In the Dark,” Slate’s ”The Political Gabfest” and the Ringer Network’s ”Bill Simmons Podcast” among many others that focus on politics and urbanism. If you’re already a podcast listener and you’re looking for something new, here’s a few lists of ”best podcasts of 2018:”
Advertisers and publishers are somewhat like me in that so far they’re still late adopters of podcasting. Pods have been around for at least fifteen years and season one of the first podcasting hit, ”Serial,” originally aired in 2014. Yet spending on podcasts is still under $400 million annually in the U.S. (in a $200 billion ad spend market.) So ad spending on podcasts is still relatively small but emerging.
On the publisher side of things, despite the success of ”The Daily” from the New York Times, podcasts from media properties, especially print media are still somewhat few and far between. Quick…name another one! Mother Jones, is one example, that does a great podcast for those inclined to listen about politics with a liberal lean. Also, shout out to my local daily paper that does a daily podcast on local news – The Morning Record.
Generally speaking podcasting is exploding but if one works in publishing or advertising there’s a surprisingly limited number of podcasts worth your time. Here’s an unofficial list (from this unofficial podcast reviewer) of the better podcasts that focus on topics in content and advertising:
There are many more podcasts that focus on more specific content and advertising topics – social media, site traffic, content marketing, affiliate marketing etc. etc. We’ll focus on a few of these in a future post.
In the meantime, consider giving these ad industry podcasts a try. Better late than never!
Contributor: Jim Jinks
For ecommerce and direct-to-consumer advertisers and marketing managers, we know there’s no shortage of metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ponder and occupy our time.
Close or Conversion Rate
Cost Per Click (CPC)
Click Thru Rate (CTR)
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Abandonment Rate
Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
Ad Cost/Conversion (ACoS)
Lifetime Value (LTV)
Pay Per Click (PPC)
The majority of these metrics or KPIs are online or ecommerce focused, of course. As we all know, marketing dollars have increasingly gravitated toward digital media in large part due to its measurability. But at Mediabids we specialize in lead generation via print publications and platforms. In other words, we bring ecommerce-like metrics to offline commerce.
Several of the KPIs in our industry -performance-based print advertising- are just like those in digital marketing; namely LTV, CPA and conversion rate to name a few. But our ”click” is an actual customer call and our ”conversion” refers to a customer call being long enough to be a ”qualified call” – meaning the customer is normally speaking with the advertiser’s call center for one-minute or longer. We use unique phone numbers and URLs to track response to our client’s advertising. Whereas the heart of digital media is pay per click (PPC), the core of our industry is pay per call (PPCall.)
Many may be surprised (or not) to know that Amazon has emerged as one of the largest pay per click platforms in digital advertising. Amazon.com adds campaigns and new consumers every day. In fact, Amazon merchants currently enjoy a 10% average conversion rate -the highest in PPC advertising, so more and more advertisers are moving budget from Google and Facebook to Amazon PPC.
This got us thinking. How does Mediabids’ pay per call advertising compare with the industry leading pay per click platform? How does PPC compare to PPCall?
The following Amazon stats come from a recent PPC Den Podcast [”Amazon PPC Advertising Stats”] done by the guys at Adbadger.com. Click the link to check it out. The Mediabids PPCall stats are directly from our platform.
So there you have it – PPC vs. PPCall. PPClick will generate a higher volume of activity (though less efficient) but the conversion and cost metrics are more similar with PPCall than not.
Contributor: Jim Jinks
Tis the season to scour the internet’s Holiday Gift Guides for the best presents for all the friends and family on your shopping list this year.
Publications have found a new way to monetize their audiences by producing content with shopping recommendations utilizing affiliate links.
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which the advertiser rewards an “affiliate” (aka publisher – online or otherwise) for each sale driven by that affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
So in other words, when you see a Gift Guide with clickable links published by the New York Times and you end up purchasing a product they recommend, that advertiser will give the publisher a percent of the sale to reward their efforts.
Instagram has made many of their “influencers” rich through affiliate networks such as RStyle, LIKEtoKNOW.it, ShareASale, Impact Radius, and others. This has long been popular among bloggers and independent website publishers as well. Though there are ongoing issues with disclosure and there may be more regulations in the future, this revenue stream is likely here to stay.
Now, many publications are getting into the game. The New York Times launched a beautiful interactive Gift Guide with dozens of product recommendations divided by category. This comes as no surprise following their acquisition of The Wirecutter, an online consumer guide which publishes in-depth product reviews.
The NYT includes the following disclosure (if you know where to look for it). But for many readers of the NYT unfamiliar with this type of advertising, it certainly further blurs the lines between editorial and advertising.
The gifts included in this guide were chosen solely by The New York Times. Our editorial content, including that by Wirecutter, which recently became a part of the company, is not influenced by advertisers or affiliate partnerships.
Through a third party, we may receive commissions on sales made on the linked sites. When our editors and writers make selections, they do not know what products may generate a commission, or what that commission might be, and payments play no part in their decisions.
Similarly, New York Magazine has a recommendation page called The Strategist. Real Simple has many holiday gift guides available as well, and I’m sure most magazines are building these types of pages now, if they haven’t already. Wired, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, the list goes on and on.
Buying print advertising, for years we’ve seen publications try to maintain “church and state” separation between their editorial recommendations and the revenue generated from their advertisers. But there are huge monetary opportunities from affiliate advertising revenue in providing product recommendations to loyal readers.
Sometimes we describe what we do here at Mediabids with per response advertising (or performance marketing) as affiliate advertising since many e-commerce companies are already familiar with affiliate programs and do these types of campaigns online. Supplementing their online affiliate campaigns with a print campaign is a great way for advertisers to reach a new and desirable audience. Likewise, it benefits publications by bringing revenue back to print through advertisers that wouldn’t otherwise consider the medium.
For publications looking to add an alternate revenue stream, or if you’re an advertiser interested in reaching new consumers…call Mediabids today at 860-379-9602.
Sometimes we feel like we’re on a quest to prove print advertising isn’t dead. The term “print evangelist” suggests we’re not alone. Whether your goal is branding or direct response, print still holds a powerful piece of the marketing mix. We’ve seen studies pointing to high ROI and LTV for advertisers willing to run in print. And for our per-response advertisers as well as our direct clients, we’ve seen time and time again how print makes the phone ring.
Check out these great new print ad campaigns which show that some of the most creative work in the ad business is still being done for print.
Thanks to Nikki Gillilant at Econsultancy for compiling a more in-depth roundup with even more awesome print ads. Check it out here.
Post by Darcy Mauke.
Advertising Sales Leaders, Ad Sales For 2017, What Is Your Plan?
Join media/advertising sales expert Ernest F. Oriente, the founder of PowerHour, LLC, and the live weekly PowerHour Advertising Sales Academy and Jedd Gould, CEO of MediaBids for a FREE MediaBids PowerHour teleseminar on Thursday, September 15th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/New York time focused on Ad Sales For 2017, What Is Your Plan?
Details are below for our 245th free educational PowerHour, since 1995.
During this 60-minute MediaBids PowerHour we will be discussing the points below plus fielding your specific questions:
#1. Planning for 2017 ad sales, what trends are you tracking? How are print versus digital ad sales comparing?
#2. What is your plan for selling to ad agencies and key decision-makers during this upcoming budget season?
#3. Your U.S.P. + your media kit + your alliances = smart business development + focused selling + media comparisons?
As prep for #2 above and to continue this discussion with ad sales leaders from around the world, please join our flagship LinkedIn group, Advertising Sales Success—with 4600+ leaders on this url: http://tinyurl.com/kxtlmvv
Registration Information
=================
When: Thursday, September 15th
Please note, the above MediaBids PowerHour starts at 1:00 p.m. Eastern/New York/Toronto time, which is
12:00 p.m. Central/Dallas/Winnipeg time
11:00 a.m. Mountain/Denver/Calgary time
10:00 a.m. Pacific/San Francisco/Vancouver time
9:00 a.m. Alaska time
6:00 p.m. GMT/London time
Fee: No charge
Recording is available after the MediaBids PowerHour, but you must register below to receive it.
To register, please go to: http://marketing.mediabids.com/seminar/TeleSeminarReg.html
For additional registration information, please contact MediaBids.com at 800-989-0406 or E-mail jpeterson@mediabids.com
We look forward to having you join us
Come follow us on Twitter, https://twitter.com/Mediabids and LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/company/mediabids-com
The Print Observer - Newspaper & Magazine Advertising Insights 