Cc: Bruce Siceloff 
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
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Does anyone know of the use of ads tied to specific topics of articles in
the archives? Any studies or Real Life stories on profitability? Just how
aggressively are newspapers educating advertisers about the possibilities here?

An old sports page story might pop up with a fresh ad for muffers or
basketballs, and a European travel story might bring up a pitch from an
airline. Online newspapers could run some highly targeted advertising of
this kind and structure it in ways that did not compromise editorial
independence. Advertising agencies might agree to buy ads associated with
certain topics of old stories, as opposed to the stories themselves. 

Too, advertisers might deal with a publishers group of one kind or another
to enjoy many possibilities and optimal placing among old stories (I wonder
if the New Century Network has any plans like this in regard to morgued
material)  Newspapers might band together to offer some kind of constantly
updated placement service for oldies. Too, they might gear ad charges for
different pages to the number of past accesses or click-throughs. Or,
without knowing about specific stories in the morgues, advertisers might be
assured a minimum number of accesses or click-throughs from selected topics
in selected markets or many random markets at once, subject to independent
audit. Some of the same network concepts, of course, could be used with
fresh stories. 

Especially in the case of archived stories, I'd hope the advertisers would
be smart enough to get it. Presumably NCN or NAA has commissioned or could
commission studies of the demographics and product preferences associated
with particular topics or kinds of stories. 

Hey, this is an era of microtransactions; so even infrequently accessed
pages from the morgue might still be worth the effort in the long run.. 

Apologies if I'm just repeating what's already out there. At any rate, if
Yahoo! and the rest can run ads that pop up when a search reveals certain
pages, then newspapers should be able to. If nothing else, crude categories
of articles could be used--based on sections in which the old stories appeared.

Revenue from archives with these smart ads just might be enough to avoid
charging  readers, or at least to keep the charges very very low. I myself
would hope that the costs would be well under $1 a pop, and perhaps even .25
if fees were necessary. If newspapers truly want to live up to the First
Amendment ballyhoo, then they should strive as much as possible to keep the
archives affordable to nonmillionaires. Those are the very resources on
which civic activists and others rely when trying to hold politicians to
their records. No, newspapers aren't charities, but before charging for old
stories, they might explore a partial or full ad model. 

Ironically this just might be more profitable in the long run. And just
think of the hyperlinking possibilties. Newspapers could be free and easy
with internal links to their archived material, knowing that readers
wouldn't feel if an electronic hand were constantly reaching for their wallets.

David Rothman | rothman@clark.net 
NetWorld: What People Are Really
  Doing on the Internet, and What It
  Means to You (Prima Publishing, 1996)
http://www.clark.net/pub/rothman/networld.html
Washington Post op-ed on TeleRead:
http://www.clark.net/pub/rothman/telpost.htm

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