DISQUS

Publishing 2.0: New York Times Can’t Sell And Advertisers Refuse to Buy Full Feed Advertising: Stop Betting Against The Internet!

  • MJ · 2 years ago
    IMO, The Times has always been a rather pompous bunch who viewed themselves as being above every other news organization, so no surprise here.
  • Mark Forman · 2 years ago
    One example of a blogger that stuck to his guns is Henry Abbot of True Hoop. He made a deal with ESPN but was insistent that nothing would change because he didn't want to alienate his readers. ESPN didn't monkey with feed and everyone is happy. So there are some old media people that are either more prescient or have better business sense.

    This is an interesting aspect of this space and I'm sure we'll have many more examples of this in the near and distant future.
  • Hashim · 2 years ago
    I completely understand and agree with your argument, but when I look at my own behavior, as someone who subscribes to about a dozen NY Times category feeds, I do find myself clicking through much more often than I would if it were a full feed. Why? Because it's the Times, and they consistently deliver a good read.

    I like the Gawker solution to the full vs partial feeds debate. Gawker blogs serve partial feeds without ads, and full feeds with ads. And it makes everyone happy.
  • Bill Flitter · 2 years ago
    We did research on this topic - the CTR on full content feeds vs. summary. The difference is small. Bottom line is in either case users do go back to the publisher's site no matter if the publisher is creating full or partial feeds. The details can be found here: http://www.pheedo.info/pheedread/Pheedo_Pheed_R...

    And in regards to in-feed advertising, advertisers want performance - period. Full feed or summary feed that isn't part of the discussion. How well will the advertising perform in-feed, on site or search.

    Best regards,
    Bill Flitter
    Pheedo
  • Rex Hammock · 2 years ago
    It's a bit ironic that the NYT suits and advertisers would disregard logic, economics and statistical analysis in making an argument against advertising on full post feeds -- on the *Freakonomics* blog. Have they ever read it? Have they read the book? Did they think the Freakonomics authors (and readers) would buy their intuitive -- but wrong -- assumptions about the economics of advertising on feeds vs. sites?
  • Ryan Sholin · 2 years ago
    Gaaaaah! Who would possibly want to sell anything to a bunch of tech-savvy male professional early adopters with a geeky streak?!!??? Keep them away!
  • Alex Iskold · 2 years ago
    All of this is not uncommon. Bigger companies / older companies are just not as quick and not as willing to change. They are conservative, they are risk averse and at times they think that if they wait things will blow over.

    Think IBM => Microsoft, think Microsoft => Google. Same trend.

    Alex
  • caries · 2 years ago
    I think they are stupid! Internet is the great storage of informathion and we have use it right...
  • Rob · 2 years ago
    Scott, you're right... RSS adoption outside technology, finance and a few other areas has been slow. However, the bigger point you don't mention is that one reason RSS took off in certain segments is because people got sick of advertising and wanted a method of getting content without receiving spam, seeing pop-ups, etc. Now that publishers (and RSS readers) are more sophisticated, advertising is getting included. Is anyone measuring/monitoring reader reaction to this?
  • Matt · 2 years ago
    Well, I for one am impressed and surprised by the Times' on this one. See, I think Scott and the commentators on this site have their expectations set too high for the Grey Lady. See, you expect the Times to be forward thinking and intelligent with regards to the internet, and I just don't think that's realistic. Bill Keller is the man, after all, who came to my college and proclaimed that blogs were simply a href=http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2005/02/21/News/Nyt-Journalist.Talks.Journalism-2031718.shtml>"a one man circle jerk"> (no pictures, please Scott).
  • Ari Paparo · 2 years ago
    There are a lot of reasons why RSS ads are significantly lower in value compared to web display ads. You mention behavioral and cookies -- yes, these are unavailable. But so it rich media, by far the most valuable ads to sell. So is agency-side tracking, a requirement for any major buyer. So is geo-targeting, frequency capping, daypart targeting -- the list goes on. RSS display advertising is totally unproven while web advertising is extremely valuable.

    That's not to say that you don't have a point about following the audience, etc. But you have to understand that RSS vs web advertising isn't even a contest from a value perspective and won't be for 10 years.
  • Hashim Warren · 2 years ago
    Ari,
    you can make almost the same argument about ads in email, yet The Times manages to sell for those, and at a higher CPM than web ads.

    I subscribe to 2 Times newsletters, and both are very well produced. It's a stark contrast to their anemic feeds.
  • Scott Karp · 2 years ago
    @Ari

    But that assumes you have a choice between serving ads to a certain audience segment in RSS or on your site. But what if the choice is between serving ads to this audience in RSS or NOT AT ALL because they AREN'T COMING to your site, and you can't force them to by using monopoly distribution tactics. It's a free market for content, and this audience that favors RSS will go ELSEWHERE, which means their advertising value is ZERO.

    As Bill Flitter and others point out, full feed readers to visit the site to see comments, etc., so by using partial feeds, you don't get to serve ads to these people on the site OR in the feed.

    How does this possibly make any sense?

    I can tell you that Publishing 2.0 gets a large volume of clickthroughs from feed readers where people have access to full content -- those clickthroughs go up proportional to the number of comments on a post -- this post we're discussing is a perfect example.

    @Rob

    I don't buy that no advertising is a significant value proposition for RSS. It's almost entirely about consuming all of your content easily in one place. RSS advertising has been around for years now, and I think you'd have a tough time proving that it's a barrier to use.

    @Rex,

    Indeed, the irony is so rich I can barely stand it.
  • Ike · 2 years ago
    Scott - the legions of Freakoids leaving couldn't articulate the issue the way you did, and that's why they are being dismissed.

    I'm still waiting for someone to pick up on the change that I think will affect them long-term: the disruption of the community - http://occamsrazr.com/2007/08/08/killing-the-go...
  • Emmanuel · 2 years ago
    Let me raise another issue: displaying ads on RSS also means displaying ads on my.yahoo, Google, or any web based rss agregator. I m not sure, if it becomes a real business that all these big players will let ad revenues be generated from their plateform without taking their part.

    I m afraid this is not a simple question of full text or not. The business of agregators is tolerated because we can assume to share value by receiving trafic. Put full text here and we will move to something we already know : syndication model. I m not sure it's a good idea to put all our value in the hand of portals.
  • Scott Karp · 2 years ago
    @Emmanuel

    That's a fascinating question, but I just don't see it -- Google wanting a share of ads displayed in RSS feeds in Google Reader would be like them wanting a share of ads displayed in email newsletters that I receive in Gmail. Sure Google may display ADDITIONAL ads next to RSS feed content on Google Reader, as they already do in Gmail, but I don't see on what basis they could lay claim to monetization of content that travels through the service.

    Of course, we're in uncharted territory here, where software is now media, all the lines are blurred, and that probably means all bets are off.
  • Emmanuel · 2 years ago
    Google can simply cut the ads, or yes accept it. "what basis"? Just because he is publishing the whole thing.
    Just think about the opposite situation, ads on Youtube videos:
    - Youtube videos are displayed on Wordpress.com blogs. Wordpress can block it at anytime (remember youtube videos on Myspace?). Wordpress.com can claim for part of the revenues as distributor.
    - Now look at CBS videos on Youtube. Why CBS didn't sell their own ads on videos and put it on Youtube to get full part of revenues? Yes because Google can provide visibility and few guaranties (remember when you said few mont ago "why paying to be on Myspace if you can build your own promotion page"?).

    But answer is more brutal: Google owns the network, control the distribution and their policy. Google makes the rules and can provide value added features to convince you'd better have to negociate.

    RSS is great but I m not sure the business is on it, rather on the way to use it.