Tag Archives: Advertising

Should bloggers pay business tax?

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Should bloggers making money from their site have to pay a business tax?

It’s a question that’s been doing the rounds in the past week, following what commentators have been labelling a “tax amnesty” in Philadelphia. Thousands of online writers have reportedly received letters from local government reminding them that if they make money from their site, they must pay up.

Any bloggers earning revenues from their online publishing – through display advertising or services such as Google Adsense – will be asked to pay $300 (or $50 a year) for a Business Privilege Licence. Alternatively, they can remove any advertising or other money-making means and have their blog classified as a hobby.

The renewed efforts by the city council to ensure everyone eligible to pay does so have sparked wide debate and commentary across the web, from the Washington Post and Reuters to technology news site Mashable, who say the fee will only have limited impact. Казино игрите имат много последователи по целия свят. Ако вие сте любител на слот игрите, покер, рулетки, зарове, блекджек, можете да изберете българското казино PalmsBet. В казиното на Палмсбет ще намерите голямо разнообразие от казино игри, като например над 300 слот игри, както и голям избор от игри на маса, видео покер и други.

The Atlantic Wire offers a neat summary of the main arguments, from Technorati’s post arguing that a $300 tax is “outrageous” for bloggers who on the whole make little returns, to New York Magazine’s suggestion that bloggers should shun advertising services, rather than hand over the small profits they make.

Ads 10 times more expensive on iPad apps than web, suggests ad group VP

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Some interesting stats on the use of iPad apps for Conde Nast titles via an article on Advertising Age. Users are spending an average of more than two hours with its Vanity Fair and GQ apps – double the average time spent with print magazines, according to the metrics.

But perhaps more significant are the estimations made by Adam Kasper, senior vice president of digital innovation for global advertising group Havas Digital, regarding advertising rates on iPad apps. Kaspers suggests that an ad on an iPad app will cost $100 per thousand views – three times as much as a video ad on Hulu and 10 times as much as a banner ad on NYTimes.com.

Audience statistics for iPad applications are still very new and more metrics are needed – but are initial pricing points for advertisers too high for this new outlet?

US advertising body publishes guidelines for online ads

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has produced a set of guidelines to help advertisers and publishers “demystify” online advertising.

The IAB Quality Assurance Guidelines aim to define a set of standard terms and processes for use by ad networks and exchanges.

The US-based body has called the current online advertising marketplace “complex and confusing.”

According to the IAB, networks and exchanges that volunteer to be certified against the guidelines will be “providing marketers and agencies with a standardized approach that is designed to make buying easier and to give increased control over where ads are placed”. In turn, marketers and agencies will benefit from “greater brand safety assurances that ads will not appear next to content that they decide is inappropriate”.

“For the first time, the US ad networks and ad exchanges market will be giving advertisers consistent and standardized information, serving to build greater marketplace trust,” says the IAB report.

Editors Weblog: US newspaper and TV websites launch Craigslist-rival boocoo

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A group of US newspaper and broadcast TV news websites have launched boocoo.com – a listings and auction site to compete against eBay and Craigslist.

As well as charging for listings, the revenue plan for the site is to licence listings by zip code to individual newspaper publishers.

Tony Marsella, president of boocoo’s parent company Ranger Data Technologies, tells the Editors Weblog:

On Craigslist the model is “put the ad up and people work the price down”, whereas our model is just the opposite.  Put the item on and bid the price up.  We will also not allow “adult” materials, services, etc.  Our standard will be the high standards that newspapers have maintained for years in their local markets.  We will in the proper fashion make all of these points in our ad campaigns.

eBay is extremely vulnerable in the area of general merchandise auctions.  They have moved far from those people as they continue to move toward big box retail and fixed price selling.  Items that are difficult to ship, (lawn mowers, large furniture, snow blowers, etc) work very well in a market that has a local emphasis. Local focus also gives consumers the added advantage of shopping for services.

Full story at this link…

Hyperlocal ad trial spreads to Guardian Local’s Edinburgh and Cardiff sites

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As reported by Journalism.co.uk last week, the Guardian’s trial of hyperlocal advertising system Addiply has spread across all three of its recently launched local “beatblogs”. The system, which offers low cost adverts that can be sold on a weekly or monthly basis with different rates for different sized customers, went live on the Leeds site last Thursday before being introduced to the Cardiff and Edinburgh Guardian Local sites.

Publishers retain 90 per cent of the revenue earned from the ads, with the remaining 10 per cent split between Addiply and PayPal.

“One of the things Addiply is good for is for people to be able to promote their own community events and local services. It’s not designed or intended to bring in big name advertisers; it’s more for the smaller advertisers in the community or for people listing individual items for sale,” Sarah Hartley, Guardian Local launch editor, told Journalism.co.uk last week.

New York Magazine: Weigh-in for New York Times and Wall Street Journal

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The launch of the Wall Street Journal’s New York edition is just around the corner, and Rupert Murdoch is going after the Grey Lady as tenaciously as his massive advertising cuts suggest. But as the playground rivalry heats up and first blows are traded, New York magazine highlights just how much more of a heavyweight contender the Times is in terms of personnel:

Here’s a list of the reporters we know will be devoted, at least part-time, to working on the Journal‘s new New York section. After each, we’ve listed the reporters that cover the same beat for the Times. As you can see, in nearly every beat, the Times already has two reporters in place for each one of the Journal‘s.

The magazine’s full comparative list must make intimidating reading for the Journal reporters heading into the ring, but, as Greenslade points out in his post, the NY Times Company has no way near the resources of News Corp, and the Journal’s New York edition could expand significantly yet.

Full story at this link…

Sun runs explosive advert with Moscow terrorist bombings story

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This morning I was leafing through an old guide to subbing from 1968. There were a couple of pages in it stressing the importance of ensuring articles do not clash with adjacent adverts. Weight loss advert next to an anorexia story, cigarette advert next to a lung cancer report, that kind of thing.

Well, it seems that, 40 years on, not everyone is paying attention to their text books. Or their website. Not satisfied with putting images of a plane emerging from a ball of fire adjacent to a story about today’s terrorist bomb attack in Moscow, the Sun’s website made use of some nifty graphics to have plane and fireball emerge from the story itself, leaving behind a charred hole.

Although my book has an additional chapter on new forms of ‘electronic sub-editing’, it doesn’t cover this kind of thing in any detail. I checked. It is however called ‘The Simple Subs Book’, so it may, after all this time, still be ideally suited to some.

h/t currybetdotnet

Advertising Age: US newspapers cut 109,500 jobs in past five years

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Advertising Age’s article from earlier this week on the difficulties faced by media advertising staff making the transition from selling print space to going digital is worth a read – not least for the statistics it offers on media job cuts in the US:

Between January 2005 and January 2010, newspapers eliminated 109,500 jobs and magazines shed 19,400, according to an Ad Age DataCenter analysis of Bureau of Labour Statistics’ jobs data. During that same period, jobs at internet media companies, portals and search engines grew by 18,300.

Full story at this link…

TechCrunch: Newspapers have never made much money from news, says Google’s chief economist

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TechCrunch has a summary of a presentation by Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, on the decline of newspaper advertising revenues.

“The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news,” says Varian. They make money from “special interest sections on topics such as Automotive, Travel, Home & Garden, Food & Drink, and so on.” The problem is that on the web, other niche sites which cater to those categories are a click away, leaving the newspapers with sections which are harder to sell ads against, such as sports, news, and local.

Full post at this link…

Presentation below:

030910 Hal Varian FTC Preso

Media Release: Social networks to fall under Advertising Standards Authority’s remit

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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) could see its remit extended to cover marketing activity on companies’ websites and social networks, it was announced yesterday.

Says the Advertising Association’s (AA) release, which can be downloaded at this link:

The Advertising Association (AA) has submitted the industry’s recommendations to the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), for the extension of the non-broadcast Advertising Code in digital media, which will be administered by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). This landmark move for advertising self-regulation seeks to address societal concerns and will increase protection for consumers and children.

Marketing communications activity in paid-for space online is already covered by ASA. But the extended remit could come into force by Q3 2010.

A release from the ASA states:

Currently, the ASA’s online remit covers paid-for marketing communications such as pop-up and banner ads, paid-search and viral ads. However, nearly two thirds of the complaints that we receive about online marketing activity are not presently covered by the code. The proposed extension of our remit will plug this regulatory gap, ensuring that consumers enjoy the same level of protection on websites as they do in paid-for space.