New Media and the Future of Advertising

A media revolution is underway as the nation struggles through tough economic times, but the show must go on.

Salem-News.com has big things coming in 2009.

(SALEM, Ore.) - It's no secret that media is changing fast. Newspapers are having an extremely difficult time holding their heads above water, closing left and right, and yet Internet news is streaming forward at full speed.

Old media has to give up the ghost and make the switch fast, and as for all that newspaper and television news and production people know, the Internet is a different world.

That isn't to say that skills don't crossover; they do. But it can be hard to teach an old dog new tricks and I have watched organizations struggle with layoffs and learning curve issues. Some approaches have appeared effective and some looked more like a train wreck than an electronic news and information page.

The reasons why this is hitting the newspaper industry so hard and fast vary, but in the end I suspect that it is just evolution. That theory doesn't offer solace to newspaper employees around the nation being let go - in some cases, in droves. It is tragic, but as this evolution continues to take place, it seems logical that many, if not most, of these skilled journalists will find their place in the new media world.

I've been publishing Internet news for almost five years here at Salem-News.com and it has been an interesting ride to say the least, after a life in broadcast TV news.

We have weathered technology storms and each time we seemed to come out ahead. Our Web designer Matt Lintz has created a system that flawlessly publishes stories on our pages, while at the same time making them easy for search engines like Google to access and add to their lineup.

I can't go into it just yet, but there are big and exciting changes on our near horizon and as fantastic as they are, like other fast moving Web news developments, they are an indication of the larger, rapid growth that is underway.

From the beginning, we have strived to present a clear product that is not confusing or difficult to access. We allow no "pop-up" ads even though clients have asked for them, and we charge absolutely nothing for visitors to access our more than 10,000 news stories alone that have been published since 2005 in our archives.

Salem-News.com actually dates back to the summer of 2004, but our platform changed completely in the early period and while those archives exist, they are not posted online at this time. We plan to eventually update the archives with their addition.

Our coverage has been presented by a very small band of journalists and certain things like our medical marijuana and PTSD coverage from Dr. Phil Leveque, the original cartoon series' by Glen Bledsoe, the collection of articles exposing the magnitude of serious toxic waste at a closed Marine base in Southern California, and my in-country reports on Oregon National Guard soldiers in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd like to think, define who we are.

And that is not mentioning many achievements and endless contributions from our dedicated and always expanding staff of contributing reporters. Our Op-Ed writer worked in newspaper for decades, our Religion and Philosophy reporter grew up during the Great Depression, our Publisher Bonnie King doubles as a writer and video reporter. We have a retired attorney as our legal expert, a writer who discusses life from a single dad's perspective who was a Vice President at ABC, and the list goes on.

We have worked closely with two Portland, Oregon television news departments and two Oregon radio stations. Our former News Director Kevin Hays won a prestigious award from the Associated Press for stories from Salem-News.com and we weren't even AP members. It has been a fascinating journey thus far as the nation's first independently owned and operated "Pure Play" Web news organization.

So for the burning question; the future will bring a continued expansion of the way Internet news stories are presented, especially in terms of multi-media applications. It is my hope that more local news sites like Salem-News.com will emerge and we have plans in that regard.

It is important to understand that a blog, for the most part, is a Website that takes content from another site, posts it, and then allows people to add commentary and ideas, essentially creating dialog about the story.

Our model is not in the civilian journalist category, though we can easily work with people who are not full blown professionals, especially when it comes to photos and breaking news information.

It seems very important that the people who write Internet news have the same skills and backgrounds that any major media outlet requires. The Web has more mistakes on the average than broadcast or print news, and that has to change. Of course we make mistakes too and that is the way it goes sometimes.

The bottom line is that reporters have to embrace the Web as we have, and until more exclusively Internet news outlets exist, Web news will continue in many cases to be the runoff from a TV station's daily news or a newspaper's daily articles. It isn't necessarily bad that organizations transfer the information straight across, but there are clever and creative ways to approach an Internet story that are not often utilized by most media orgznizations.

Advertising

Newspaper has always been an advertising favorite for many types of businesses. New car dealers, grocery stores, and many others have depended on newspapers to get their message into the hands of their target market. One big advantage has been the paper's ability to print coupons, which is easily done online today. In today's world things are changing fast. As this industry labors to stay afloat, the cost of paper is rising, and delivery charges soar with the price of fuel. It leaves advertisers scrambling to figure out what to do.

When a person drives down the freeway they see billboards. The colorful messages leave an impression on the individual, and after seeing the ad several times, the person who saw the Magic Burger ad might stop at that place for lunch. Whether the ad was good or not will of course make a big difference.

If you hear a radio ad, the same thing takes place, though usually a person must hear something more often than see it to retain the information. A commercial describing food may later allow a person to connect the dots, even subliminally; they might drop in and nab the food item that was advertised.

Television once again, is the same thing. This is the medium that has major effectiveness with sound, color and motion, overpowering all other mediums for reach. Thus far.

Thank goodness that with billboards, TV, radio and newspaper ads, you can just "click" on the ad and go to a Website to learn more.

Oh wait, you can't do that with any of those mediums.

You can with Internet, but the number of advertisers "expecting" people to visit their sites and buy their products is astronomical. It is unrealistic to believe simply appearing on a page guarantees automatic action. When a specific ad is clicked on, it is called a "click through" in the Web advertising world and it is not a good way to gauge the effectiveness of your ad. Some pay $65 or more CPC (Cost Per Click) if a person clicks and buys whatever service they're offering, but in my opinion it isn't worth it. Internet ads need to have credibility.

Ads from questionable groups plant spyware and potentially grab your personal information and render your computer sick. Other advertisers want you to buy products in order to get their "free trip" or whatever it may be.

It seems that like billboards, newspaper, radio and TV ads, the best thing about an Internet ad is that it leaves an impression on the viewer. If it is inviting and looks safe, people will click on it. The advertisers have to understand that even if people don't click on it, they still see it as long as it is a well placed ad and has a clear message. Their brand is being reinforced.

Google Adsense is a program Websites with traffic can be part of. It doesn't pay that much, and what you see is extremely targeted advertising. This is key and exactly what will always increase the effectiveness of Internet advertising.

I had a Google ad in an editorial about Ann Coulter that was anything but flattering toward her. I was called by another staff member later that morning and informed that an ad for Coulter's book was in my story, that discussed in my view, what a miserable individual she is. Needless to say I removed the ad code, but we all laughed in amazement over that one.

With regional Web advertising, the same thing that Google offers its national clients is possible with Salem-News.com. Targeted ad programs can plug an ad from a local attorney into a story about a court case for example. A computer store ad can be in a science and technology report; the list goes on and on. It takes coordination but I think things with regard to local Internet news advertising are going to continue to evolve at a very fast speed.

Salem-News.com is currently seeing an average of about 11,000 unique visitors a day and roughly 30,000 daily page views (or impressions). Our statistics on Web evaluation sites like alexa.com indicate our strong growth in all areas. Simply being mentioned on our pages instantly boosts the Website ranking of any company that advertises with us. To learn more, visit our Advertising page or email Bonnie King at bonnie@salem-news.com.

More information on the expansion of Salem-News.com, coming soon.

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Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.
Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 in Afghanistan with Oregon troops. Tim recently returned from Iraq where he covered the war there while embedded with an Oregon Guard aviation unit. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com