Being able to track digital marketing directly is what so strongly distinguishes it from offline marketing. Whereas newspaper, TV, radio, and outdoor ads only estimate viewership and effectiveness, online advertising can tell you how it performed, and right away. Yes, there are discrepancies in online advertising reporting, and yes attribution to traditional marketing channels has […]
Disruptive technologies are often met with lobbying efforts to block them by vested interests trying to preserve the status quo. One such example is the unsuccessful effort by taxi companies to use the law to hold back Uber’s advance, especially in Europe. Another is the European newspaper industry’s efforts to boost sagging revenues with strict […]
A new effort by the Spanish Newspaper Publishers Association (AEDE) to prevent Google from shutting down its News site in Spain is an amazing example of industry chutzpah or hubris. The action shows so much chutzpah in fact that it enters the realm of unintentional political satire. First the background if you don’t already know […]
A member of the Swedish parliament, Niclas Malmberg, wants Google to help fund Swedish news publications along the lines of the French model established last year. Threatened with a “link tax,” Google agreed “to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.” Google also agreed […]
A new Nielsen study on consumer trust in advertising shows trust in search ads has risen since 2007. Nearly half (48 percent) of consumer respondents now say they trust search ads, that’s up 14 percent since 2007. This is certainly good news for search advertisers. In more good news, with the exception of ads in […]
Earlier this month Google, which past French president Jacques Chirac once called an agent of “Anglo-Saxon cultural Imperialism,” threatened to stop linking to French news websites after French publishers and the French government floated a proposal to require the search engine to license their content. Current French President Francois Hollande’s government is essentially seeking to tax Google […]
The internet and search engines in particular are the top sources for information about local businesses, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Foundation. That’s not really a surprise. But what’s interesting perhaps is how many people rely on print newspapers and how few seem to rely on social media […]
One of print newspapers’ only advantages these days may be the ability to deliver circulars and coupons. Not anymore. According to a report from Bloomberg News, Google is working with advertisers such as Best Buy and Macy’s to create Web-based circulars, which will be available starting today. The piece quotes Nick Fox, vice president of […]
In studies of the evolution in how Americans seek out news, the trends tend to be that we use search and other online methods for staying informed. The consistent exception is how we access local news. Despite the proliferation of hyperlocal blogging (my own neighborhood’s West Seattle Blog being an excellent example of how hyperlocal blogs […]
Another Google search service has gone missing: the home page for Google News Archive Search is no longer available. It was previously accessible at news.google.com/archivesearch. Google News Archive Search allows you to search through news articles that date back longer than the 30 days that are typically covered by regular Google News. It’s still available. […]
Google’s ambitious effort to digitize the world’s newspaper archives and make them available online has come to an end. The project launched in 2008, and it currently has digitized material from what looks like about 2,000 newspapers — including the Milwaukee Sentinel, whose July 21, 1969 front page is shown at right. But rumors have […]
Everyone knows that print newspaper circulation is declining and consumers are increasing accessing news online. Some may wonder why newspapers are slow to move way from print, but the truth is that print still provides the bulk of newspaper revenue and at this point, print heavily subsidizes online efforts. Print, then, enables newspapers to experiment […]
The Google Blog announced a new tool to help news publishers earn money online with their content. The system is called Google One Pass and it enables publishers to use Google to charge for content and subscriptions to their content. Google said, “publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: French Newspapers Partner To Sidestep Google News A group of six French newspapers is partnering to create an online news site that they hope will be an alternative to Google News. […]
A group of six French newspapers is partnering to create an online news site that they hope will be an alternative to Google News. France’s National Daily Press Union announced the plan yesterday and said the virtual newsstand will be launched in September. According to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog, the French […]
Via paidContent comes news that Google might launch a micropayment system for newspapers by the end of the year. paidContent references this article from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which says Google is encouraging publishers to try out a system called NewsPass. In its article, paidContent describes NewsPass like this: La Repubblica says that, with […]
Your local newspaper may soon offer SEO services. Heck, maybe it already is. Two of the three biggest newspaper publishers in the U.S. have recently announced that they’re selling marketing services to small/local businesses … and those services include things like SEO, local search marketing, and more. Gannett Newspapers is the latest to hop on […]
A new report saying that 44% of Google users fail to click from Google News to newspaper web sites got some buzz this week. However, after a closer look at the report, I don’t see it providing the damning evidence that Google really is a content vampire, as some news publishers have accused it of […]
Newspaper reader Eric Schmidt, who happens to be Google’s CEO, has spoken frequently about his reverence for news journalism and the important role it plays in society. He and his organization have worked with and reached out to publishers to find ways to promote and expose their content online. Yet despite these overtures many newspaper […]
I always thought that Boston.com’s local search tool on the site was a model for other newspapers to replicate. However it appears that “local search” on Boston.com was something of a failure. According to a story on the Nieman Journalism Lab site it never really took off: The reality is that Boston.com’s local search never […]
Bloomberg has a story out suggesting that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News may be joining Rupert Murdoch’s coalition of the willing to block Google. But I don’t think that’s what going on at all, and I’m trying to clarify things. Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, which publishes the […]
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, is speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The following is a live blog of her appearance, which is scheduled less than an hour after she announced a Google/Twitter partnership to include real-time tweets in Google’s search results. This is a four-person […]
Is Google a newspaper killer? Not by a long shot, says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Nor does he want it to be. In a long interview about his company’s relationship with newspapers and the print journalism industry, Schmidt made it clear he wants established players to survive. In fact, he thinks Google has a “moral […]
Ambivalent is word that best describes newspaper publishers’ relationship with Google and Google News in particular. Some publishers see Google as a partner or potential partner and some consider Google to be the devil incarnate, responsible for virtually all their woes. For its part Google sees itself as a supporter of newspapers, helping them by […]
Despite their frosty relationship, Google is proposing a micropayment system that could give the newspaper industry a way to charge for its online content. According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the micropayment system will be based on Google Checkout and be available within a year “to both Google and non-Google properties.” The NJL has posted […]
May it please the Italian court. Google does not ban newspapers that opt-out of Google News from being in Google at all, as a new complaint from Italian publishers alleges. It’s not actually a court that’s going to ponder this allegation. It’s Italy’s AGCM, which appears to be akin the the US Federal Trade Commission, […]
Less than a year ago, Google launched a digitization project to archive as old newspapers. Google has announced they have quadrupled the amount of articles in the Google News Archive. Google has added Halifax Gazette, Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Village Voice. Plus Google added international sources, such as the Manila […]
Google cofounder Sergey Brin turned up at a session for the press at the Google I/O event today and took questions on Google’s relations with newspapers, cited hopes of breaking “Page’s Law” of software sluggishness and even one about what he thought about the expected name of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. Below, a summary […]
Here’s a change of pace: Some newspapers are making money online and crediting a search engine with making it happen. AdAge writes about the Yahoo-Newspaper consortium, and cites multiple cases where individual papers or newspaper groups are using Yahoo’s ad targeting technology to increase online-only ad sales. The consortium has sold an estimated $50 million […]
This had been reported before, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged that Google had looked at investing in or buying a newspaper in an interview in London with the Financial Times: FT: Would you ever consider buying a newspaper; they’re cheap right now? ES: We’ve actually looked at this and we’re trying to avoid crossing […]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed the Newspaper Association of America conference in San Diego this morning. It comes against the backdrop of the AP copyright controversy, rising tension between Google and newspapers and publisher frustrations with their own declining revenues. Some have accused Google of devaluing their content. Schmidt’s talk was generally sunny and upbeat […]
The word “content” wasn’t historically used to broadly describe writing or imagery or video until the internet. The term “content” also implies a kind of generic equivalence — lots of things that are more or less of equal value or can be lumped into the same bucket. That notion certainly applies to what’s happened to […]
Grant Crowell, of ReelSEO and GC Interactive, published a whitepaper this week discussing the newspaper industry’s opportunity to tap into the increasing popularity of video consumption as a means to drive incremental site engagement and revenue streams. Full disclosure – my company, EveryZing, funded the research, however the findings, recommendations, and editorial content are all […]
Google announced that they will be closing down their Print Ads initiative. Google will no longer take new ads of February 28th and will close down the whole product offering on March 31st. Google said they are discontinuing this service because “the current Print Ads product is not the right solution.”
SearchBiz today rounds up some items from the last 24 hours. Most of them concern personnel moves or speculation about who might get the top spot at Yahoo. Then there’s the ongoing MicroHoo saga and whether a new CEO will restart talks with Redmond. There’s also the matter of MSN being branded a “lewd” site […]
In my last post, I discussed the state of the union for newspapers. As we all know, newspapers have struggled to move their businesses and revenue online, and they have struggled to do it in a way that does not cause massive disruption. This has been discussed and agonized over by a number of writers […]
Have you noticed the number of layoffs being announced by newspapers of late? When the New York Times announced in February 2008 that they were cutting 100 positions from their newsroom, it was a sad moment. A prominent national paper that informs our opinion and dialogue was announcing a cutback. Then the San Francisco Chronicle […]
A new report from analyst firm Borrell Associates contains fairly dire revenue projections for both local newspapers and print yellow pages ($5 billion in projected print revenue losses in five years). The newspaper angle is picked up today by the Wall Street Journal and PaidContent, which both lay out some of the numbers. The report […]
Newspapers have watched as “their” national advertisers have gone elsewhere online to get the reach and local placements that they provided almost exclusively offline. There have been several disappointing attempts in the past to build a national network of newspaper publishers: the failed New Century Network and the existing but arguably underperforming Real Cities and […]
Using an expansive definition of the marketplace, Borrell Associates says that “local online advertising” is worth $8.5 billion today. That number consists of local search, “local banners,” and local video. Banners is the biggest spending category and video the smallest. But Borrell expects local search to grow substantially to become almost 50% of the total […]