Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Newspaper Ads Gaining Online

Newspaper websites increased their online ad revenue by nearly 35 percent in Q1 of 2006, but that's just a trickle of their income. According to the Newspaper Association of America, the $613 million in online revenues is less than 1 percent of their ad sales.

Publishers are considering (again) distributing electronic versions of content to specialty portable devices as another revenue stream, according to Reuters. This requires people buying yet another device, instead of reading content on mobile phone RSS readers like FreeNews. Bad idea.

Alternatively, customized RSS feeds including ads that are tailored to be printed could generate more revenue. For example The New York Times could deliver formatted feeds of its top stories that would fit on a few printed pages. I would like to set up my customized RSS feed based on NYT content, so for example any stories that mention hybrid cars or the Yankees are part of my paper.

So whether you wake up in Cincinnati or Galveston, you could print your copy of the paper and read it on the train. An electronic version (PDF) with interactive ads could also be delivered via feed and would be more widely read than the unformatted feeds we get today.

By John Gartner at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)

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