The New York Times opens up to self-service advertising
Finally. One of my biggest critiques for 99% of newspaper websites is that you still need to go through a human being to advertise on them. That’s why blog advertising network BlogAds is so brilliant; for years it’s allowed anyone to go in, create his or her own ad, and pay a base price. All without having to deal with a single person. This cuts down on extra costs needed to hire ad people when they’re not always necessarily needed, and it’s inviting to smaller online businesses that might be overlooked by an advertising team.
I’m not sure how long the New York Times has offered this feature, but I just noticed it for the first time today. Unsurprisingly, a company that normally advertises on blogs snagged an ad on nytimes.com:
Self-service ad posting is a great approach, especially for the smaller advertisers.
What about those serving the adverts also providing profile/demographics of those who will view the adverts? This would be valuable because it’s not just about the brand that your advert is appearing in, but who is actually viewing the advert.
Anyone know if this service is being offered?
Mike.
I know letter the users and bidders have control is the way the Web is pushing.
But I think this is exactly what’s wrong Web advertising and making it (relative to print) anemic.
Publishers need to realize ads are part of their content, and that in order for it to be looked upon with interest by readers with interest (and thus profitable), they need to treat it like content and edit out this kind of junk ads (I think the tee ad qualifies, just barely, as junk).
That being said, if the ads could automatically be tailored to a user’s interest, that qualifies as editing.
Example: Facebook adds at first seemed to be hitting on my interests, and I began to look at them. Lately they have been mainly “How I got $15K from Obama” and the like — Now I look at them less.