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So you got Drudged? Did you make any money?
A tornado or hurricane rips through your town. Or a crazed gunman opens fire at a nearby school or shopping center. Or an Interstate highway bridge collapses.
Whatever, the news in your backyard can suddenly become the focus of public attention all over the nation and world – and the doorway to the big news could be your online newspaper. And for 24 to 48 hours your Web site will become one of the busiest news sites in the world. Your page traffic might increase 10-, 20- or even 100-fold.
Sounds wonderful, right?
Not necessarily. Some online newspapers, such as the Omaha World-Herald during a recent mall shooting, can’t handle the traffic and suffer embarrassment.
But even if all goes well technically, what’s the business proposition for the newspaper that provides the news coverage to the world?
“How to monetize windfall Internet traffic” was the subject of a session at the NAA’s annual Marketing conference in late February.
“Everything happens so fast,” said Al Gibes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “that there’s no real way to sell more advertising. By the time you’ve figured out what’s happening, the peak is over.”
The Dispatch and the Indianapolis Star made money off traffic surges when their football teams played in championship games – Ohio State in consecutive NCAA championship games and the Indianapolis Colts in the 2007 Super Bowl. But those weren’t unanticipated events. The advertising staff had time to plan and prepare, and knew which advertisers would be intrigued by the extra eyeballs on the Web sites.
Phil Pikelny said the Dispatch is working on a program so that when bad weather causes school closings, the Dispatch’s Web site will offer educational videos produced by the Columbus Zoo. This content can be sponsored, and the Dispatch can promote the programs for children and parents trapped at home.
Still, no one had ideas for unexpected breaking news.
Gibes said the Review-Journal had several recent news events that caused huge traffic spikes. “All we could do was limit our local campaigns (so they wouldn’t over-deliver) and turn on remnant advertising.”
Remnant advertising can fill the void, but the rates paid to newspapers are low, typically less than $1 cost per thousand. Gibes said the AP video content on the R-J – which offers a revenue share to papers – did see an increase in traffic. But the extra revenue was small.
Sharon K. Smith of Tacoda, a behavioral marketing company, asked, “What is the value of one-hit wonders?” Those are Web surfers who hit a news site once and probably never come back “Lets face it, they have little to no value.” She said what advertisers most value – and are willing to pay high rates for – are geo-targeted local audiences.
I think Sharon is right.
And, there’s a bigger issue. We all have fought to drive more and more traffic to our Web sites. We’ve worried about search engine optimization. We’ve made RSS (really simple syndication) available. We’ve made our content easily available to all comers – search engines, scrapers and aggregators. If there’s a major news event, the TV anchors simply read off newspaper Web sites, with or without attribution.
So we get more “one-hit wonders” looking at our online newspapers, but will any of this help us pay for reporters and editors to collect, write and produce print and online newspapers? The NAA session offered no solutions.
We can drive eyeballs from all over the world to our content – but how long can we continue to finance our newsrooms? The search engines and aggregators could be killing the golden goose that made them rich and famous.
Whatever, the news in your backyard can suddenly become the focus of public attention all over the nation and world – and the doorway to the big news could be your online newspaper. And for 24 to 48 hours your Web site will become one of the busiest news sites in the world. Your page traffic might increase 10-, 20- or even 100-fold.
Sounds wonderful, right?
Not necessarily. Some online newspapers, such as the Omaha World-Herald during a recent mall shooting, can’t handle the traffic and suffer embarrassment.
But even if all goes well technically, what’s the business proposition for the newspaper that provides the news coverage to the world?
“How to monetize windfall Internet traffic” was the subject of a session at the NAA’s annual Marketing conference in late February.
“Everything happens so fast,” said Al Gibes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “that there’s no real way to sell more advertising. By the time you’ve figured out what’s happening, the peak is over.”
The Dispatch and the Indianapolis Star made money off traffic surges when their football teams played in championship games – Ohio State in consecutive NCAA championship games and the Indianapolis Colts in the 2007 Super Bowl. But those weren’t unanticipated events. The advertising staff had time to plan and prepare, and knew which advertisers would be intrigued by the extra eyeballs on the Web sites.
Phil Pikelny said the Dispatch is working on a program so that when bad weather causes school closings, the Dispatch’s Web site will offer educational videos produced by the Columbus Zoo. This content can be sponsored, and the Dispatch can promote the programs for children and parents trapped at home.
Still, no one had ideas for unexpected breaking news.
Gibes said the Review-Journal had several recent news events that caused huge traffic spikes. “All we could do was limit our local campaigns (so they wouldn’t over-deliver) and turn on remnant advertising.”
Remnant advertising can fill the void, but the rates paid to newspapers are low, typically less than $1 cost per thousand. Gibes said the AP video content on the R-J – which offers a revenue share to papers – did see an increase in traffic. But the extra revenue was small.
Sharon K. Smith of Tacoda, a behavioral marketing company, asked, “What is the value of one-hit wonders?” Those are Web surfers who hit a news site once and probably never come back “Lets face it, they have little to no value.” She said what advertisers most value – and are willing to pay high rates for – are geo-targeted local audiences.
I think Sharon is right.
And, there’s a bigger issue. We all have fought to drive more and more traffic to our Web sites. We’ve worried about search engine optimization. We’ve made RSS (really simple syndication) available. We’ve made our content easily available to all comers – search engines, scrapers and aggregators. If there’s a major news event, the TV anchors simply read off newspaper Web sites, with or without attribution.
So we get more “one-hit wonders” looking at our online newspapers, but will any of this help us pay for reporters and editors to collect, write and produce print and online newspapers? The NAA session offered no solutions.
We can drive eyeballs from all over the world to our content – but how long can we continue to finance our newsrooms? The search engines and aggregators could be killing the golden goose that made them rich and famous.
(Marc Wilson is CEO of TownNews.com and president of The Job Network. He can be reached at marcus@townnews.com.)
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