|
|
 |
|
| |
ADVERTISEMENT
|
| |
|
Price for news content is ads and more ads
Posted
at
2:27 pm
by Neal Pattison
As my previous entry revealed, I’ve been wondering about our tolerance for commercial messages – all the ways companies and merchants try to reach us with their sales pitches.
The resourcefulness of advertisers is nothing new. We sit through ads before we see a movie in a theater. On airplanes, the seat pocket is stuffed with product catalogues. And do you remember the first time you found yourself seated in a public restroom, staring at an advertisement on the stall door?
It's no surprise that the Web gives advertisers even more intrusive and varied tools to use on us – whether it is a Google ad targeted at my personal computer based on my personal history of Web searches, or ads that pop up, pop down or pop over my favorite Web sites.
Newspapers, in particular, wonder about our tolerance for ads. Why? Because advertising keeps them in business. It pays the rent, the phone bills and the salaries of the reporters, photographers and editors.
The amount newspapers charge subscribers actually covers only a tiny fraction of the cost of printing and delivering the paper.
And on the Internet, most newspaper content is free.
Some folks suggest that newspapers need to charge for Web content if they hope to survive. They advocate subscriptions or credit accounts that collect micro-payments – a few cents for every page we view.
On its Web site, the Atlantic Monthly claims newspaper publishers are attending a hush-hush meeting outside of Chicago today to decide how to "extract payments from third-parties and ad networks that have appropriated newspaper content."
In other words: They won’t collect from the consumers, they’ll collect from Web companies that are passing newspaper content along to those consumers.
Internet purists insist that Web content has always been free and will always remain free. Period.
How important is this issue to editors like me? We’ve had to make trims to The Herald since the economy started slowing down in 2007. We've condensed sections. We've reduced page sizes. We've dropped some features. And all of these cuts would be offset if each unique user of Heraldnet.com paid 60 or 70 cents per month.
Are readers prepared to pay for on-line news? In my opinion, nope.
So it’s back to my earlier questions about advertising: What’s our tolerance for aggressive efforts to sell, sell, sell to us?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Return to My Back Pages |
|
|
|Contact Us
|Advertiser Services
|Home Delivery
|Newsstand Locations
|Classifieds
|Feedback
|About the Company
|Work@the Herald
|Site Map