Online ad placement improves revenue, customer service

By Peter M. Zollman

At lunch the other day, a friend told me about the ad he placed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel to rent a condominium.

ìIíd been thinking of placing a three-line, six-day ad, and expected it to run $100 to $200,î he said.

Boy, was he surprised. More important, though, the Sun-Sentinel was surprised, too ñ by what happened next.

Instead of calling the paperís telephone room, he went to its Web site.

ìThey had all these nice additions, such as bold and shadows and boxes that could be added to see it live on the Web. So I kept working on it, and by the time I was done my six-day ad cost me $640,î he said. ìDid I run the ad at that price? Yes I did ñ because it definitely stood out from the crowd, and you canít really say everything you need to in three lines anyway.î

Pardon me for harping on this topic, but newspapers are leaving a lot of money on the table ñ and wasting a lot of staff time that could be spent more productively ñ by encouraging people to call their phone rooms instead of placing ads online.

When you call Delta Airlines to buy a plane ticket, you hear a recording: ìLower fares may be available at Delta.comî Their lowest prices are on the Web, not in the phone room. If you speak to a human to buy a ticket, itíll cost you more. Two ways. Aside from paying a higher fare on the phone, thereís an additional $10 surcharge for telephone bookings.

Yet when Classified Intelligence tested newspapersí online ad sales tools, we found many of them confusing or lacking. They didnít tell whether the ad would appear in print, online, or both, or for how long; they didnít show you what the ad would look like in print; they didnít offer upsells; they didnít let advertisers add photos Ö well, you get the picture (or not, as the case may be).

One newspaper ñ get this! ñ told us it charges more for ads placed online because it has to pay the company that provides the Web interface. Gee, we thought, ìWhat are they thinking? Donít they realize they have to pay the reps in the phone room who handle the calls?î

As more ads are placed online, newspapers find they can convert reps from inbound ìad takersî to outbound sales reps ñ making sales as opposed to ìtaking orders.î And two papers we know of report that online ad placement volume has grown to the point where each reduced the staff of its phone-room staff by two reps.

Some newspapers have built their own online ad-placement tools, but most home-grown software weíve seen doesnít measure up. (Some giant publishers have the information technology horsepower to design it right, but theyíre few and far between.) Several vendors ñ AdLizard; AdStar; Creative Circle Advertising Solutions / AdQic, and Future of News / Place My Ad, among others ñ provide well-designed, effective online ad sales products. It costs far less to buy one than to build your own ñ and those companies maintain, support and upgrade their services on a continuing basis.

Even at newspapers that offered effective online ad placement, it was generally well-hidden. Most we spoke to admitted in-paper promotion was limited or non-existent; online promotion was rarely more than a ìplace an adî button or line somewhere on the paperís home page.
Back to my friend with the condo for rent: Did his ad work? In fact, it didnít. Was he unhappy about it? Surprisingly, not at all. ìIím not saying that itís the fault of the ad. If I had to run it again, Iíd do it just the same way.

ìI donít buy those enhancements from a phone rep because it makes me feel like Iím being ësold.í This wayî ñ designing his own ad online ñ ìjust makes me feel creative. It took more time doing it this way Ö but it was time well spent. I felt like I was creating a work of art.î

When was the last time one of your private-party customers told you they thought their ad looked like ìa work of art?î
In a recent report about online ad placement, we offered 17 tips for making sure your system is as good as it should be. But even before you test your app against our 17 recommendations, make sure you take the basic first step and offer an effective, clear, user-friendly, ìwhat you see is what you getî online tool for placing ads in your paper.

Peter M. Zollman is founding principal of Classified Intelligence, a consulting group that works with newspapers, dot-coms and vendors to improve classified advertising services. The companyís report about online ad placement is available through ClassifiedIntelligence.com. Zollman can be reached at 1 407.788.2780, pzollman@classifiedintelligence.com.