“It is easy for people in traditional media to look at the internet and say, ‘Oh God, the internet is taking away our readers and advertisers’. But – and I want to be really clear about this – it is not Google that is taking advertisers away. It is consumers changing their behaviour,” says former Trinity Mirror man.
After the search giant announced the end of its Print Ads scheme, Journalism.co.uk contacted Google about the future of its audio and TV ad initiatives.
Would they be affected? A resounding no from the Google spokesman.
Well, yesterday Google announced it will be closing its Radio Ads programme – citing similar reasons to the print scheme closure:
“While we’ve devoted substantial resources to developing these products and learned a lot along the way, we haven’t had the impact we hoped for.”
Instead Google will focus on online audio streaming and advertising around this, phasing out the existing audio ads by May 31 and selling Google Radio Automation – the software that automates broadcast radio programming.
Up to 40 staff involved with the project are expected to lose their jobs, said Susan Wojcicki, vice-president of product management, in the blog announcement.
“Speaking at an event at the Columbia Journalism School on Thursday, the Daily Beast’s Tina Brown said she thought advertising would debut on the site ‘by late spring,”the BusinessInsider blog reports.
Growth in online search will offset the the downturn in online display and classified advertising in 2009, according to new analysis from Ernst & Young.
Less money will be spent on advertising focused on reach with investment in performance-based advertising, such as search, expected to increase, suggested the ‘media and entertainment by numbers’ report.
Internet advertising is likely to overtake TV advertising this year as the largest ad medium, the report said.
“But to assume that a media accounting for a fifth of all advertising budgets could be totally immune to a downturn would be too optimistic,” the report added.
Publishers will be affected most by the move to more interactive ad models, including cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-action (CPA), as this will cause CPM rates for banners and display advertising to fall.
Online classified advertising will be affected more by the general economic climate, for example fewer jobs and properties available, than by changes within the advertising industry itself, the report added.
[Read Journalism.co.uk’s full breakdown of the Ernst & Young report]
Publishers are building internal sales teams to replace ad network deals, as part of cost-cutting, according to this report.
Conde Nast title Lucky has created an iPhone application that directly links to store inventories.
US firm Mixpo has created a DIY video platform to enable small businesses to create video advertorials. The company has now partnered with US broadcasters NBC Local Media, Tribune, Fisher, Freedom Communications and TownNews.com.
London-based MediaEquals made an approach to buy Google’s Print Ad scheme, which the search engine last week announced would close next month.
Despite partnering with more than 800 US newspapers, Google has decided to end its Print Ads scheme, which saw the search engine help partners run traditional print-based advertising campaigns.
According to a post on the search engine’s Let’s Take It Offline blog, the service wasn’t having the desired impact and resources behind the project will be reinvested in finding other revenue sources for publishers through Google’s products.
“We believe fair and accurate journalism and timely news are critical ingredients to a healthy democracy. We remain dedicated to working with publishers to develop new ways for them to earn money, distribute and aggregate content and attract new readers online. We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space,” said Spencer Spinnell in the post.
“These important efforts won’t stop. We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies.”
Google began trialling print advertising in 2005. The ads will no longer be available from February 28, though campaigns already planned will be run until March 31.
As Craig Silverman points out, CNN has come up with a rather novel way to atone for a mistake – by offering free advertising.
The network mistakenly aired footage about the island Yap calling it Guam.