“ In one respect, this is working. Our advertisers pay $15 or more per thousand impressions, or appearances, of their ad, and we have been able to hold this rate in these tough times — though we have increased volume discounts, and we now target local advertisers’ ads to local readers only, thereby increasing their value. Meanwhile, our local competitors often offer our customers half that rate, and national networks like Google Ads offer to sell ads onto our site for a tenth of what we charge or less. But the number of advertisers willing to pay for that quality is still too small. This much I know: If the rate for locally sold advertising drops to $1, or even $5, only publishers with truly gigantic global traffic will survive on ad revenues. Increasingly, the pitch we’re making to advertisers is to sponsor part of the site, rather than just buy banner ad flights. This is working well. In the past two months, we’ve sold two sponsorships: One for the Daily Glean, a midmorning roundup summarizing and linking to the best of what’s in the other local media, written with attitude, and one for Community Voices, our daily op-ed feature. These opportunities give sponsors more exposure than they would get with regular banner ads and a stronger connection to our core mission. Foundations have provided critically important funding to MinnPost. The Knight Foundation has been especially generous, but they told us from the outset that they wanted us to find local foundation support, too.
Joel Kramer: Lessons I’ve learned after a year running MinnPost » Nieman Journalism Lab
