PAPERS MIX IT UP WITH ONLINE AD MANAGEMENT

by Hays Goodman
Goodman is the Associate Editor for NewsandTech.com.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is getting in the zone by making print ads available to a wider audience.

The ad service, Ad Zone, lets advertisers display their ads online as well as in print, said Paul West, director of business development at stltoday.com, the Post-Dispatch’s Web site.

Besides increasing the utility of print advertising to the consumer, Ad Zone also serves to get smaller advertisers’ feet wet with Internet advertising, often for the first time, West said.

“We wanted to make sure advertisers could use this as a way to start building their online presence,” he said. “The service provides the ability to link from an advertiser’s ad to their Web site. Not every advertiser has a Web site yet, so this is a great introduction and helps us talk to them about building out their online presence.”

The Post-Dispatch (daily, 286,939; Sunday, 468,211) has been using Chico, Calif.-based Travidia (formerly AdExpedia) to do its outsourced ad conversion and hosting for the past year.

West said Travidia was chosen for a number of factors, including the fact that the company uses U.S. workers to process orders, reducing the chance for language-related errors.

Sizes low

In addition, Travidia’s user interface keeps image file sizes low, translating to quick loading times. Finally, Travidia employs a navigation technique that eliminates the need to continuously open a series of new browser windows as the user drills down, which makes it easier for users to understand where they are at all times.

“We recognized when launching the service, that for it to be successful, we needed to have lots of ads online,” he said. “We had a campaign that included print promotion and we wanted to be sure that when users got to it, that there was a very robust service there.”

Travidia technology shows entire display ads on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Web site, converted from original PDF files. Individual portions of the ad can be zoomed in on from within the Web browser. Graphic: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

To ensure that kind of participation, the Post-Dispatch and Suburban Journals (37 papers surrounding the St. Louis area serving subscribers in both Missouri and neighboring Illinois) offered advertisers a carrot and stick. The stick: a planned rate increase. The carrot: Advertisers could have their ads appear in print and online for a single, bundled price.

Other alternatives

Travidia isn’t the only vendor offering online ad conversion services.

Print2Web LLC also converts PDF-formatted display advertising and special sections to Web-ready advertising. Pricing depends on ad volume as well as the specific level of “click and zoom” enlargement needed. One paper using Print2Web’s software is The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has placed geographic-specific coupon books online at: http://www.print2webcorp.com/news/atlanta/valueclipper/
couponhome/couponhome.asp.

Harvest Info, another service provider, has more than 300 newspaper customers worldwide, and provides similar services for recruitment, ROP, insert, special section, auto, real estate and classified advertising.

Still other papers are offering their own custom-designed ad programs in an attempt to maximize the use of interactive technology.

Capital Newspapers’ Madison.com, in Madison, Wis., developed an ad package called “Top Spots” that’s selling well among advertisers, according to the September 2003 Classified Intelligence Case Study Newsletter.

The ad package consists of:

*A rotating tile ad on the right rail of Madison.com’s home page

*A large rotating Macromedia Inc. Flash-format ad on each section front page and on the search results of the classifieds page

*The company’s name on the front page of the classifieds category selected, which contains a link to the advertiser’s own Web site or to a custom-built page that includes a listing of all print-to-Web and online-only ads

*Premium positioning within chosen classifieds categories

*Print exposure to category-specific promo ads running in Madison’s Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times (combined daily, 113,189; Saturday, 120,707; Sunday, 154,588).

Twelve Top Spot packages are offered, four each in autos, homes and apartments. The homes and apartment categories have sold out and the cost is $1,000 per month with a 12-month minimum buy. The program has consistently generated about $24,000 in monthly revenue, according to the case study.

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