• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, June 3, 2005

"Circle slash online advertising" is a sign most traditional print content publishing companies should consider hanging in their offices. A second sign could hang in their bathrooms that reads: "Wash your hands of online advertising before returning to work," and a third could rest by the front door that says: "Online advertising not welcome."

Making the sale of online advertising strictly prohibited at traditional print publishing companies sounds harsh, but with online advertising purchased in its current form, most traditional print publishers need to get out of this business as soon as possible.

Here is why;

1. They cannot win the race. Many print publishers entered too long after this race for online dollars started. The successful dot-com publishers they are chasing may have slowed a half a step from the chaotic pace they launched with, but they still move at such a torrid clip that print publishers cannot make up enough ground to make this race competitive.

2. They are being eaten alive. Online media buyers have become highly experienced negotiators in securing online inventory. Print publishers have taken their premium content brand's online offspring, and are feeding it to lions. The CPM disparity between print and online--although derived from a different base (readers versus page views and impressions)--still indicates how little weight traditional content brands carry in negotiations for online space.

3. They are not big enough to play. Most print content brands' Web sites are simply not big enough to play the direct marketing game that takes place inside online advertising.

Think about this. The three most established brands in news content, Time.com, Newsweek.com, and USNews.com, combine to reach approximately 12 million monthly unique readers. Yahoo! has a reported 77 million.

Consider further that Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL, which all feature breaking news editorial on their front pages and offer their readers personalized news sections, combine to reach almost 250 million unique readers. If an online advertiser wants to reach a consumer within a trusted news environment, they do not need the most established brands in news content to do so.

The bigger problem for print publishers however, is that most online advertisers could care less about the editorial environments their ads appear within. My former CEO used to preach that online advertising sold on a cost-per-thousand basis is bought with a customer acquisition mindset.

If you buy into the idea that today's online advertising environment is pulled by a direct marketing undertow, then sending out more mail will almost always score better quantitatively then sending out less. Online publishers simply have too much inventory at their disposal to improve the performance of a campaign. Coupled with technological sales tools like behavioral targeting and a sales organization experienced in selling and executing within this complex medium, dot-com publishers are far better at meeting current online buying goals than Web site extensions of greater established print content brands.

The GOOD NEWS for print publishers is that when one door shuts, another always opens, and they have an ideal opportunity to walk away from the online advertising business and get back into the branding business with a superior ad product that happens to be delivered online.

Almost 80% of a traditional print brand's advertising base has not invested with that same brand online. Print publishers need to build an ad product that meets the needs of these advertisers, and walk away (slowly) from the needs of those 20% who may buy advertising online but covet direct marketing solutions.

The primary need of traditional brand advertisers is to have their message appear in a clutter-free environment. The secondary need is to market their message louder and more clearly than their competition, while the third need (although I would argue that this could be the first) is to see their own advertising (without hitting the refresh button!) so they can merchandise their marketing investment internally.

To meet these needs, print publishers should sell their Web sites on an exclusive basis to one advertiser per day, per week, or per month based on market demand. As simple as that sounds, it is the best way to deliver branding advertisers a product they can understand and embrace online. Additionally, and most importantly, this kind of online ad product will ignite their print-centric sales team (which has all but ignored online) to sell this product as a unique complement to their print proposals.

If traditional print publishers employ this simplified approach to selling their online inventory, they can sell an ad product online that strengthens their core proposition as a premium brand, and does not diminish it.