Revenue Strategies

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

Peter Meng was browsing Twitter when he got his big idea. He typed “for sale” in Twitter’s search box, and was amazed at how many people were using the site to post items for sale. The problem? Those posts were only being viewed by people who followed the user with an item for sale. This revelation led to Meng’s conceptual development of adFreeq:

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

The concept of paid content for newspapers online has been a controversial one, and one that has only recently begun to gain some traction with major newspapers.

It’s long been assumed that men are more likely to deal with car problems and women with household operations. Thus you’ll see tire ads in the sports section and home care products advertised in feature sections or on TV dramas. Might a deeper analysis of the consumers that businesses want to reach matched appropriately to the growing variety of news and programming products offered by the media result in improved performance for both the businesses and the media?

Despite the decline of newspaper classified ads, opportunities exist for those willing to adapt and focus on the user experience.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that the news industry’s challenge in transitioning from print to digital is hampered by the culture within those organizations. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the comments collected in the research suggest that the most troublesome culture barrier comes not from the newsroom, but from other areas of the enterprise.

Mike Fancher, former editor of the Seattle Times and 2008-2009 Reynolds Fellow, moderated a town hall-like discussion of the issue, leading off with the Pew Research Center’s Mark Jurkowitz and Tom Rosenstiel. Tuesday’s RJI discussion centered around bridging the gap between traditional news and business methods and the revenue streams and news reporting of the future.

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

New digital ad units are said to perform significantly better than incumbent ad forms.

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

Was participation in LAUNCH! worth it? Absolutely. And for a whole lot of reasons. Although we didn’t directly raise money at LAUNCH! It definitely jump started the whole process.

We only had a few hours of sleep Wednesday night and were up very early working on the final version of the demonstration and a functional version of the web site. We had to check-in to our presentation group by 10:30 AM. Over the two-day event there are eight sessions consisting of five to seven teams per session who each have about five minutes to demonstrate their product and ten minutes to take questions.