15 Comments Add your own

• 1. Ed  |  June 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am

  Hmm, if the fundamental assumption that Google’s business is advertising is wrong, what does that do for the rest of the argument?

  Click my name to read an article about this in Wired…

• 2. Amanda E.  |  June 26th, 2008 at 11:49 am

  You need to remember one thing about Google’s advertising system- its easy to use.

  Some commentary based upon a relative’s foray into advertising for his local small business:

  Say I have a company called “Amanda’s Widgets” and I want to advertise in the Spokane/CDA area and I have a small budget - oh say two hundred dollars

  On Google, all I have to do is transfer some money to my adword account, design my ad or pay some college student to do it, pick some keywords and a target location and my ad is live minutes later.

  Now I want to advertise on a local hypothetical TV station website. They get lots of visitors I assume, and those visitors are local.

  In order to advertise on their website, I see that I have to call and setup an account with one of their ad execs to even consider posting a single ad. There’s no simple interface to upload an ad to them, even if they have to approve them first before going live.

  Google gives average rates on what my ad campaign is going to cost me. This TV station website has nothing listed, not even a rough estimate. Now remember my ad budget is only two hundred dollars and I have my widget business to run.

  Why bother dealing what is going to look like a major hassle because I have a tiny budget compared to all those car dealers I see advertising on that station and time I’ll have to spend with this ad exec - that is if they will talk to me and my $200 budget - just to place a simple ad on this TV site, when I have my own business to deal with and with Google I can be live in 10 minutes.

  And all these little businesses add up to this great big percentage of online advertising. Of course Google, Yahoo, et. all is making money hand over fist. They make it easy for people to give them money.

• 3. Tony Courtwright  |  June 26th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

  I have great respect for Google, and I believe local media can still compete. Google’s technology is not a sustainable competitive advantage. There will always be something new or someone available to rent similar or better technology.

  For example, in Spokanistan/CDA for only $6.95 http://www.krem.com/classifieds/ will easily allow a retailer to target unlimited text, 10 photos, video and e-commerce to an audience based on purchase intent. In my opinion, this offers much a more compelling story than AdWords. For a few $s more and guidance from their local media consultant, a retailer can also set-up a storefront and populate the free marketplace with their entire inventory.

  Selling local media is a street fight. You are not going to win with transactional sales alone. Local media companies will not win either without investing more in local promotion, trained feet on the street, trusted local brands and great local content.

  For now the Goostapo is a competitor. Of course, my tune will probably change if Google purchases my local media company or offers a screaming reseller deal!

• 4. wtf?  |  June 26th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

  before we try to become google, how about we sell out of our existing advertising spots… which right now set at about 50-60% AT BEST.

  Of course that’s provided that we still aren’t giving it away as added value.

  Oh yeah, and btw, Google has like 100000000x more development power than local media websites. If they aren’t completely locked down and the behest of a ‘centralized corporate development team’ (which usually consists of all of about 4-6 people), there might be on average 1-2 on a local level who can write code.

  So exactly who’s going to build this infrastructure?

  LMAO, did i hear you say vendors?

  Riiiiiight.

• 5. wtf?  |  June 26th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

  @Amber: great points on web systems.

  For Terry and the rest, please remember that google fishes in a MUCH BIGGER ocean than we do.

  Does that mean we shouldn’t be going after local like never before? You bet. But why be the “next google” or “next digg” or “the local version of X”

  Imitation isn’t going to get you anywhere.

  Originality, 1st to market with the right product will win the day.

  How bout we try some real innovation, maybe even bring in some *GASP* non-media people to our organizations and try to give this whole ‘web thing’ a real shot!

• 6. tdc  |  June 26th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

  i think terry has a great idea… first, you must think differently.

  take a peek at the jobs section here at lr and read some of the quals. they are looking for-

  “ability to drive users to watch the station”, “one-year television news experience”. etc.

  talk about wtf?

  look, as long as these oth ceo’s are bent on building their web to fail google certainly will accomodate them.

  looks like they got someyoungguys to help them, too!

  sheesh!

• 7. tdc  |  June 26th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

  oh, and to give an example of how foolish the concept of “driving users to watch the station” is, when you read a newspaper article online, do you get up off your okole and go buy the dead tree?

• 8. Amanda E.  |  June 26th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

  The problem is looking at my relatives and the small businesses they run (fishing charters, a small store, trucking, etc), they don’t have time or the want to deal with an ad exec selling them things they don’t want. Especially since upfront, they have no idea how much roughly it is going to cost them to even advertise on a TV station website.

  Then throw in the intimidation factor that a lot of these small businesses have tiny ad budgets compared say, to the car dealerships you typically see online. “Yea, that ad exec is really going to talk to me and my under a thousand dollar budget when they can go after bigger fish and a larger commission”

  All of those business owners in my family are somewhat handy with a computer and the internet since nowadays, they really have no choice and Google was the most logical answer in all their cases if they wanted to post online ads for their businesses.

  Quite frankly the first thing that pops into a few of my relatives heads if you say talk to an ad exec is Herb Tarlek. Multiply my own relatives by thousands of small business owners.

  @Tony. KremList listings don’t appear on their front page. Defeats the purpose of a small business even bothering to advertise on their site. One would be better off paying to get into the Spokesman Review’s print classifieds. At least there your ad has a slim chance to get into the right rail on the front page.

  I don’t know how and I can hear all the sales folks who work on commission cursing my name - but there needs to be someway in addition to the normal sales routes for online advertising on media sites, a way for a small business to cheaply and easily post a few ads without going having to go through the firewall of a traditional sales person. Even if its just a simple text ad, a la Google, for a few days or a few thousand impressions and has to be vetted and paid for upfront first.

• 9. tdc  |  June 26th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

  we built a self-serve coupon site for small businesses years ago ( i mean y-e-a-r-s). template-based and we would offer do the intial one for them. they got a password into “their” account and could see which text boxes would control which sections of the coupon. so they could change if/when they wanted.

  the kid who coded it was a whiz kid who also painted houses. cost about $400 and a couple lunches at big boy’s.

• 10. Anonymous  |  June 27th, 2008 at 2:01 am

  @Tony C–Spokanistan is hard to get to with 50′ lava flows and the Great War in neighboring Upper Slobodia.

  The Slobodh rebels are ruthless and gaining territory.

• 11. Tony Courtwright  |  June 27th, 2008 at 8:22 am

  @Amanda - Most retailers wish all their advertising was delivered in a highly targeted fashion to the right audience at the right time. Sorry, but I do not see the value of running an ad on the homepage if you are not reaching the correct audience at the right time. It has been my experience that an ad presented to car shoppers, real estate buyers, dog lovers and seekers of widgets of all kinds during the buying process will deliver the best results. This is where local media and AEs add value - they deliver local audiences and target products better than any drop-down selection transaction engine. Call KREM or the Spokesman (full disclosure -I’ve worked for both superb organizations) I am sure they will fit your $200/mo budget with a good mix of targeted listings and home page presence painlessly…and with the bonus of a friendly & local human voice.

  @Anonymous - I think bin Laden was seen cashing chips at the Chewelah Casino. Keep your head down soldier.

• 12. Terry Heaton  |  June 27th, 2008 at 9:46 am

  Ed, the link on my name is another Wired article in which Eric Schmidt says “I think of it (Google) first as an advertising system.”

• 13. Ed  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:45 am

  @Terry - yes, but in the same context, a local tv station is also an advertising system.

  My point is that it was Google’s ability to organize information that enabled the advertising system.

  So, what does a “Local TV” station have to bring to the table that would allow it to do a better job of organizing Local information? A domain model of that locality, right? “KBOB has its finger on the pulse of Springfield”, right?

  My linked article spoke to the theory (reality?) that domain knowledge of the information in question (in this case “Local”) is immaterial to the ability to successfully organize, correlate, and add value to, when you have enough data, and the proper algorithms.

• 14. Terry Heaton  |  June 27th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

  Ed, sorry, but you’re missing the point. Google’s ad system isn’t built on their ability to organize information, because the Web itself is their ad platform. Not so with a TV station. Look at it this way. Borrell projects $1.8 billion in local online revs for TV stations this year, but $13.1 billion overall at the local level. Hence, there are two ponds there (obviously, the $1.8 billion is part of the bigger), and my point is that local media companies — by insisting on limiting their ad platform to that which they own — limit themselves to smaller ponds. When I say compete with Google locally, I’m saying go after the whole $13,1 billion pond.

  It’s not about content; it’s about advertising.

• 15. Anonymous  |  June 30th, 2008 at 6:18 am

  @ Tony C.–I’ve never been in any casino.

  @ Terry H,–13.1 billion dollars of WHAT? Highly ignored advertising on content-starved pages. People eat peanut butter across all levels now. Where is this market you want to conquer? I’m not the only one who hates flying monkeys zooming over the email button for 5-10 seconds before I can regain control of my computer.

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