Robert Niles: June 2010 archive
How to optimize your news website for better Google AdSense revenue
June 25, 2010
A hot topic of discussion during last month's KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp was online advertising networks, specifically Google's AdSense program for publishers. More than one speaker cautioned the participants to not expect much from AdSense. At the camp and at other industry gathering, I've heard many folks dismiss AdSense revenues as delivering CPMs "in the pennies."Yet I know, from personal experience and from speaking with other publishers in the program, that much higher returns are possible, including daily average CPMs in double digits - and yes, I mean dollars, not cents.
How can a news website publisher earn more money from AdSense? I suspect that because starting with the program is so easy - you can set it up with little or no thought at all - that many AdSense publishers give the program... little or no thought.
That's a huge mistake. Everything that you do on your website - from design to reporting to community management to advertising - should be done with intent. Give any aspect of your publication little thought, and you should expect little in return from it.
If you're going to put AdSense ads on your website, or banner ads of any type, you must do so thoughtfully, using sound optimization techniques. Based on my experience, here are my suggestions for AdSense publishers: More...
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Get ready for the Battle over Bandwidth
June 23, 2010
The next great battle in the journalism industry will be the Battle of Bandwidth.AT&T's announcement this month that it will end unlimited data plans for its smartphone and iPad subscribers is expected to lead to similar announcements from other wireless providers. And Comcast's continuing efforts to throttle certain traffic from its home Internet customers shows that bandwidth battles are not limited to the wireless Web.
Internet Service Providers clearly don't want to continue offering a one-price-buys-everything option. ISPs have shown that they favor a pricing model where certain users have to pay more to use more bandwidth.
While there's some logical appeal to the idea of making the heaviest users of the Internet pay the most for their use, metered traffic online creates profound challenges for online content producers. More...
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What to cut when ad revenue doesn't cover your expenses?
June 2, 2010
The toughest question facing news editors today is: What will you cut when your advertising revenue (or other income) isn't providing enough money to cover your newsroom's expenses?Obviously, we're all looking for new sources of revenue so that we don't have to make a brutal decision like this. But in a competitive publishing market, many legacy news organizations simply are too big for what their market share now supports. What goes, then?
Over the past year, I'd heard several news editors point toward positions such as movie critics, arguing that some beats can be covered by user-generated content (such as reader-submitted movie reviews, in this case). While I'm a huge fan of reader participation on news websites, I'd like to suggest that this approach - swapping UGC coverage for staff reports - reflects the same wrong thinking that got so many newspapers into their current mess. More...
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