I am a member of  a LinkedIn group where someone posted a question that generated a lot of responses: “Is there hope for the newspaper industry?” The answer has consequences in many ways including local marketing and ad placement options.

In summary, the discussions were about:

1. Is print news a viable distribution system in the digital age?  The dominate answer was print news is in an irreversible downward spiral. Print distribution is not timely, economical, or ecologically friendly. Digital delivery is real time, relatively economical, and ecologically friendlier. Some like to ‘hold a newspaper’ Vs read articles online, but this was clearly a minority view.
2. Have declining newspaper journalism standards harmed print sales? The opinions about this varied widely, but many felt before the digital age that newspapers evolved into a local monopoly for news publication.  Even large cities are now one newspaper towns.  Monopoly control of news tended to create more and more biased, agenda driven editorial content showing up as news articles. Digital news sources are diverse and although bias is still a concern, the multitude of sources prevents a monopoly of opinions.  Finding balance in news reports can be achieved by surfing different sources. The digital world has many voices unlike traditonal,  mainstream media where a relatively few people decide what to report and how. 
3. As digital replaces print news distribution what revenue model will be used? Newspapers rely on an advertising revenue model – local businesses place ads.  Digital news publications to date have relied mostly on an advertising model, but are experimenting with subscription models or hybrids. The problem is, users have become spoiled with ‘free’ online news and are resisting subscription fees.

What does this have to do with Marketing?  Simple. Newspaper readership is down for whatever reasons. If your business relied on newspaper ads to reach customers, then you need to look at online ad sources – Internet Marketing. 

Online ads are referred to as display or banner ads on websites.  But where do you place banner ads?  You have no idea which websites your local customers are going to instead of newspapers.  People split their viewing time online across multiple sources. How do you know which websites to place your banner ad in?

The answer is using  display ad networks for popular websites.  An ad network allows you to place your ad in websites that match the geographic and demographic nature of your marketplace.

An ad network will also provide something called ‘re-marketing’ that allows ads to follow your website’s visitors around the Internet to show your ad wherever your visitors go. And ad networks provide reports so that you know the effectiveness of your ad spend unlike in newspapers where you never know if the ad worked or not.

Newspaper ads won’t get the job done as well as in the past. If you need more info about advertising in online ad networks or want to give that a try, contact us for assistance.