Upgrading the Newspaper Revenue Model

When Steven Colbert recently suggested that newspapers should just add porn sections if they were serious about competing online, it was funny and sad at the same time. Newspapers serve an important part in any healthy democracy. But if they’re going to survive, they need to address a two-fold dilemma: falling subscriptions and declining ad-revenues.

Of course, as more and more content inevitably moves online, newspapers should be focusing on increasing online ad revenues and online subscriptions. To do that, they have to increase both traffic, i.e. the number of unique visits and page views. By following the example of where the more successful web portals are now and where some of the more popular emerging portals are headed, they just might be able to that.

In a word, newspapers should be considering how to use social media and mobile technology to hyper-target both ads and content. In doing so, they’ll be able to open up their ad space to both advertisers from around the world/web, and mom & pop business that could never before afford newspaper ad space.

Localized Ads

Newspaper know more about their paying subscribers than just their IP. They have a billing address. Between the two, then, they can show ads for businesses in specific neighborhood.

This, in turn, means they can open up a variety of specialty ad rates that will make it affordable for mom & pop businesses to advertise “in the paper.” Since newspapers know exactly how many people in any given neighborhood subscribe to the paper and what content they interact with the most, they can target the audience accordingly.

A Social News Organization

Newspapers need to consider building community around their subscribers for two reasons: (1) traffic/page views, and (2) user-data — which we’ll get into below. This means integrating the usual suite of social media features such as user profiles, comments, sharing features, and leveraging APIs.

First, letting users interact through profiles and comments can help page views go up. Secondly, allowing readers to easily share content with their personal network by leveraging APIs, such as Twitter and Facebook, should also help increase engagement. Most importantly, however, will be the user data amassed through subscribers’ profiles.

Hyper-Targeted Affiliate Offers

In addition to the profile information that users would provide, newspapers will amass extensive data on its users, including content preferences and online behavior patterns. In conjunction with the data they have on subscribers’ locality and its average demographic, such information would be invaluable in identifying the specific kinds of product offers of interest to their readers.

Imagine if newspapers used this data to leveraged the eBay and Amazon APIs to show users offers they were actually interested in. Users would respond well to the ads, and instead of relying online on impressions, newspapers could monetize and CTRs and even conversions — as any other content-driven super-affiliate does.

Going Mobile

Former Financial Times journalist, Tom Foremski, recently pointed out that papers are already thinking in terms of “mobile journalists equipped with notebooks, cell phone modems, and cameras,” so the next step is to think in terms of mobile subscribers — not mobile readers, but mobile subscribers.

The first step would be sending readers mobile alerts on topics they want. Not only would this increase engagement and offer more value on subscription fees, this would also boost impressions. As mobile readers click through on an SMS to view the story, papers further increase page views, and therefore impressions.

And to build on localized ads, newspapers could leverage location based services (LBS) technology to show mobile subscribers ads that are relevant to their current location. For example, a mom & pop restaurant could reach out to a mobile user who is not from that neighborhood, but happens to be in it.

A Watchdog Business

Newspapers are in the business of (1) providing authoritative information so that they can (2) sell subscriptions and ads. But they are also much more than mere content publishers. They play an important role in a healthy democracy. There is a lot more hinging on their survival, then, than mere jobs and tradition.

Web technologies can help them better distribute their content, so they simply need to adapt their subscription and ad models to these new channels. Granted, the development of that kind of platform would be not be a simple feat; but whoever managed to pull it off well would be in a position not only to make considerable profits, but save a dying but important industry and democratic institution.

About CT Moore

A Staff Editor here at Revenews.com, CT Moore has over 5 years experience leveraging search and social media to help brands meet their business goals online. By day, he provides SEO and social content strategy to both SMBs and enterprise level companies. CT is also an accomplished blogger, podcaster, and conference speaker who educates groups and companies about how they can leverage digital media. You can find CT on Twitter @gypsybandito.

Website: http://www.gypsybandito.com

Twitter: gypsybandito