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Powered by MPI: Management Process
Integrators supplies the software for
guiding auto buyers to dealers on the
web site of the SAN DIEGO
UNION-TRIBUNE, SignOn San Diego
(http://www.uniontrib.com/).
On-line classifieds
products picking up
steam and features
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Ah, how a revenue stream can turn an R&D tide.
As warnings of classified ad erosion from print to web sites hit home this year, technology buyers turned their attention from shovel suppliers ("I can get your text on-line, just like another press") to Veg-o-Matic dealers ("It'll slice, dice, reorganize, reword, take in, e-mail out and match-make sellers with lookers, just like those competitors.")
At Connections '98 and NEXPO '98 held here June 18-23, the hot tickets were database systems and the tools for getting ads into them from newspaper or advertiser.
There was a system or business arrangement to suit any newspaper company, regardless of budget or in-house expertise. And, to twist an old concept, the technology is solid -- but the business plans feel like smoke and mirrors.
New revenue or new savings
Database-savvy suppliers fashioned bigger nets to catch potential on-line ad profits.
Resurfaced products were evident, such as city guide faces on last year's auto or real estate systems.
Newspaper-owning companies proffered new alliances and services. A few Internet developers cast their nets before newspaper buyers.
Most products promise to generate new revenue, usually by helping you escort advertisers onto the World-Wide Web, or to save money by moving input duties to advertisers and readers, a process dubbed self-publishing.
Emerging is a standard set of features and functions. Most systems receive, store and present text, photos, logos and multi-media files. Text is parsed, fielded and made searchable, with embedded hotlinks to e-mail and URL addresses.
Readers and advertisers can submit and sometimes even price ads from their home and office browsers. Ad-alert agents and shopping lists catch and hold new ads that match the customers' desires. Reports tally ads viewed, pages requested and reader preferences.
How to choose? Decide how much you are willing to spend or share, and how much control you need over hardware and software. Words like "revenue sharing," "service bureau," "co-branding" and "aggregator" may be one newspaper's blasphemy but another's saving grace.
If you are short on start-up money, in-house talent and/or enthusiasm, try service bureaus, which host your web material segregated from that of other newspapers, or aggregators, which create instant ad mass. If you are more independent or adventurously funded, buy your own servers and software, and herd your big auto, real estate and employment advertisers into your own service bureau.
Whichever way you go, check the business deals carefully. A pricey endeavor may be within your grasp when you get specific with a supplier -- or a good deal may mask a profit drain in the long run.
Own a server ... or just look like one
AdPartner, a web browser window, opens the door to the Celebro products at Gannett Media Technologies International, making it even easier to entice web-hungry advertisers to enter their product data and then whip it into print, specialty pubs or even audiotext.
Thinking beyond last year's real estate and auto grooves, Gmti has rechristened its system CityServer, a look-as-you-like path to any market segment. For inspiration, see the dining guide at GoCinci (http://www.gocinci.com/). Same technology, new topics.
Cincinnati-based Gmti will host newspapers' city guides for as little as $500 per month (varying with bandwidth use) per product line and a $10,000 setup/customization fee.
Management Process Integrators Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., also offers auto and city guide faces on its Pentawave line (http://www.pentawave.com/), with a JobChooser overlay and real estate due soon.
MPI can run the software and hardware as a service bureau to your newspaper, or your paper can license and operate the system, then act as a service bureau to your customers with MPI training and support. Nifty tools help the advertiser design and order ads for both print and the Web.
While lots of intelligent features, such as fuzzy logic in searches, deliver good results to web visitors, MPI's assets are the tools and training for customer users, plus integration (including pricing on-line) with the newspaper systems.
MPI would charge a major metropolitan newspaper several hundred dollars per month per auto dealer in its service bureau model, or a licensing fee in the low six-figures for a complete system. The San Diego Union-Tribune's SignOn San Diego has MPI-powered auto ads (http://www.uniontrib.com/).
Nova Publishing Systems Inc. is new, but its WebPub is still in the care of Team McDonald of Auburn, Calif. (http://www.novapub.com/). Jan McDonald is chief executive of both Nova and his first company, Aisi, which will concentrate on hardware and networking while Nova focuses on software and systems.
New features spiff up the Nova server, including ad-matching alerts, ad order entry from any browser and ways to save search criteria. Customers voluntarily yield demographic information in exchange for these log-in enabled features. Advertisers can control their own banner insertions and see banner statistics via browsers in their offices.
Base package pricing is $18,000 for software and no hardware; setup is included while travel and expenses are extra. The newspaper develops the look-and-feel of the web site itself. The Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner has the site to tickle for real estate, auto and jobs presentations, at http://www.standard.net/.
NEXPO newcomer CarCast by PowerAdz Corp. of Troy, N.Y., stresses car-selling tools for dealers as it competes in the auto line. Participating newspapers in CarCast Auto Marketplace '98 resell service bureau access to undigitized car dealers who control how their web ads look, complete with access to car photos, logos and vehicle identification number databases.
To pump ads into print, newspaper production staff can run a standard query language search via a web browser and batch the results to your front-end system. Ad reps also can tap the dealer's database, then cut-and-paste verbiage into insertion orders.
Costs include a circulation-based license fee plus fees for dealer training and support, which together run between $95 and $165 monthly per dealer.
In return, the PowerAdz people run the system, host the data, help sell the dealers and train everybody.
Add Inc. uses PowerAdz to post ads from 13 publications in the cheese state at http://www.wisconsinauto.com/. The Dallas Morning News, the latest CarCast participant, is in launch countdown as you read this.
On-line classifieds as bargaining table
Get truly interactive advertising by wiring buyers to sellers through Auction Universe of Yalesville, Conn. (http://www.auctionuniverse.com/).
Say someone's treasure doesn't sell from a pulp liner. Upsell the disappointed owner to the auction, where buyers haggle up the price to the seller's satisfaction. Your newspaper brand provides a safe zone for bargaining, stocked with news on collecting trends, recent prices, clubs -- even a score sheet on who lives up to their deals (four strikes and you're banned from the site).
Auction Universe does all the technical and presentation work, puts the affiliate's nameplate center screen, and shares banner revenue. It seeks 25 cents per item plus 2.5 percent commission on the sale price. In addition, this subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. wants two promo pages per week.
With eight major metros signed up, including the Hartford (Conn.) Courant (http://ctauctions.com/) and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis (http://stribauctions.com/), Auction Universe is going after e-Bay's cyberturf.
Aggregators and content builders
If you have modest means, need immediate revenue or are defending patches of ad turf, look to the aggregators and service bureaus.
Classified Ventures LLC of Chicago (http://www.classifiedventures.com/) showed its vision for attracting customers to locally branded sites for automotive, apartment and real estate classifieds. The preview site for NewHomeNetwork.com includes mortgage and affordability calculators, loan rate tables and localized content, all commingled with how-to stories to hook purveyors of cabinetry, carpets or security systems into buying ad space.
Depth of content isn't Classified Venture's only strength. For muscle, it has the combined circulations and investments of Central Newspapers Inc., Gannett Co. Inc., Knight Ridder Inc., The McClatchy Co., Times Mirror Co., Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co. Add to this publishing bulk the reach of CitySearch, the Pasadena, Calif.-based city guide producer (http://www.citysearch.com/), which recently signed on to supply infrastructure to launch classifieds in new markets beyond Classified Venture's 130 affiliated newspapers in 42 states.
Classified Ventures will wholesale co-branded Internet products in packages to affiliates, who then market and retail to their advertisers. Local ads can be aggregated with those of other affiliates. Cost will depend on market size and potential for each vertical; plans are evolving.
Cars.com just added ads from the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal (http://www.ohio.com/), while Apartments.com now shows its flag at the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/).
A competing residential rental service is Allapartments.com of San Francisco (http://www.allapartments.com/). Stocked with five million rental units in 5000-plus cities, Allapartments.com plans to compete with Classified Ventures' Apartments.com with its deep well of data, maps and details on rental complexes and their surrounding neighborhoods.
Newspaper-fed liners are extracted and parsed so they appear in a surfer's search. Sideline features, such as a "how to pack" timeline, creates local ad banner adjacencies for movers, decorators and insurance agents.
On the business side, Allapartments.com likes to share with its co-branding partners. It shares revenue from banner ad sales, splits product and service transaction fees from Renter's Resource participants, and gives a commission plus share from selling on-line electronic brochures to local apartment owners.
As an America Online classified channel and established link at portal companies such as Excite, Yahoo and Infoseek, this service has a head start on Internet exposure.
If you shun mingling ads and prefer to control your ad site's look but can't afford your own system, look into another San Francisco service bureau supplier, Electronic Classifieds Inc. (http://www.eci.net/), which stresses technology solutions for ad databases.
ECI unveiled Interactive Classifieds Engine (ICE), a site toolkit that lets a customer reword, reposition and select ECI fields any way it wants. ICE ensures that changes in ad classifications or data fields are reported consistently to the parsing engine, database and web pages. Combined with standard HTML authoring tools and a trained staffer, ICE lets you become the web site creator for your advertisers.
ECI charges a circulation-based licensing fee, hosting fees based on ad volume and handling fees for processing reader-submitted ads. While its logo and hotlink must be on your page, there's no revenue sharing or co-branding.
ICE will ship this fall, with Community Newspaper Co. of Needham, Mass., and Canada's Toronto Star up first. Ad intake via browsers now is ready at the Star (http://www.thestar.com/).
Thomson Interactive Media of Stamford, Conn. (http://www.thomsoninteractive.com/) is a service bureau that pledges, "Your newspaper can be up and running on-line in 10 business days, with no out-of-pocket expense," not even a web site.
Its Classified IQ pitch stresses no revenue sharing, no co-branding, no set-up fees and free sales training. You can choose to aggregate or segregate your ads. Nifty features are searchable display-ad EPS files, and integration with Thomson's Directory Express Yellow Pages (good for cross-selling).
New this year is SiteCrafter, a site builder that uses templates and art libraries to rapidly deploy advertiser mini-web pages. Classified IQ customers can buy the software or use it free, in exchange for sending Thomson a hosting fee for each new site. Thomson charges a transaction fee of "pennies per ad," scaled to total ad volume.
Media General of Richmond, Va., and Guy Gannett Communications of Portland, Maine, both signed with Thomson Interactive in July.
Zipping up business
Sales pitches by both ECI and Thomson appear to aim at Zip2 Corp., based in Mountain View, Calif. (http://www.zip2.com/). With its emphasis on portal power, classifieds are a small part of Zip2's big hosting ambitions.
Using the Web Site Builder Formerly Known As Pantheon, Zip2 swooshes a newspaper's liners into a searchable vat, nestled among eyeball-luring localized directories, maps, searchable databases and display ads.
Zip2 will set up your site, automate transfer of data from your front-end systems and manage web page presentation, all as part of a complex fiscal package. Zip2 also touts expertise in massaging data from any production system ... but it still doesn't parse data into fields.
Pricing varies, depending on the scope of the co-branding relationship. Big deals are today's target, involving revenue sharing of national ads and a licensing fee. Zip2's uptown customer is the New York Times Electronic Media Co.'s portal project, New York Today (http://www.nytoday.com/).
If you are a small-market newspaper seeking interactive space, check AdQuest of Waupaca, Wis. (http://www.adquest.com/). This arm of Journal Communications Inc., the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel people, aggregates 120,000 ads from 570 weekly and daily newspapers, then pastes your banner on a web page and places your ads atop lists of search results. (Unwired readers can call (800) Free-List, where an operator will go on-line to make a caller's search, then mail or fax results to the caller.)
AdQuest seeks as little as $200 per month plus a per-ad fee of 2.5 to 5 cents, depending on volume.
Absent from the show booths but not from Connections sponsorships was Classified Warehouse, the new moniker for Big Daddy aggregator AdOne Classified Network of New York (http://www.classifiedwarehouse.com/). The change is part of a new sales and marketing strategy, said Richard Bessler, vice president of operations and affiliate relations, which will concentrate on the top 30 markets without ignoring smaller customers.
Pricing is now flat, with a $1995 setup fee followed by a monthly rate based on circulation and related ad volume projections. A 75,000-circulation daily might pay $1500 to $1900, including logos and depending on bells and whistles. Classified Warehouse also splits the revenue from its national banner placements.
New slice & dice tools
Two suppliers brought new magic for converting data such as display ads and text streams into fielded data.
Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass., unveiled its Ads to Go display ad deconstruction tool, which you can see at http://www.edgil.com/adstogo.htm. Using OCR (optical character recognition) and area-linking tools, Edgil's decoders take EPS, PDF, TIF, bitmap and other digital files and convert them to ASCII and GIF files, with text blocks strung in the right order, duplicated into individual ad files.
Think about a car ad, in which the dealer's address and logo should appear with each car description. After you draw arrows between the laundry-list ads and the address onscreen, Ads to Go replicates the text and inserts an HTML logo call per car. One ad file may yield dozens of searchable ads.
While the OCR conversion isn't perfect (the Xerox TextBridge engine is trainable), this add-on makes the process manageable. Systems start around $60,000. The Providence (R.I.) Journal (http://www.projo.com/) is expected to take the industry's first road test.
You'll still need to pass the results through a text parser that populates and normalizes the database. Ask Edgil about AdParser, or investigate NEXPO newcomer NetOwl from IsoQuest, of Fairfax, Va. (http://www.isoquest.com/). NetOwl underlies ECI's text converter and processes ads for the San Jose Mercury News (http://mercurycenter.com/) and other Knight Ridder properties.
Based on pattern-matching technology written for government intelligence applications, NetOwl is fast and flexible. Pricing begins at $10,000 for a single-site, small-circulation newspaper.
-- Marion J. Love
AdQuest,
(206) 301-5062,
e-mail: tom@adquest.com;
AllApartments,
(415) 292-2960;
e-mail: information@allapartments.com;
Auction Universe,
(800) 455-5110,
e-mail: partners@auctionuniverse.com;
Classified Ventures L.L.C.,
(312) 575-2726,
e-mail: eclark@classifiedventures.com;
Classified Warehouse (AdOne Classified Network),
(212) 965-2979,
e-mail: sales@classifiedwarehouse.com;
Edgil Associates Inc.,
(978) 251-9932,
e-mail: jeff@edgil.ccmail.compuserve.com;
Electronic Classifieds Inc.,
(415) 284-5300,
e-mail: info@eci.net;
Gannett Media Technologies International,
(800) 801-3771,
e-mail: ryoder@gmti.gannett.com;
IsoQuest,
(703) 293-9004,
e-mail: rjones@isoquest.com;
Management Process Integrators Inc.,
(602) 596-9356,
e-mail: nguadagno@mpiinc.com;
Nova Publishing Systems Inc.,
(530) 887-1795,
e-mail: sales@novapub.com;
PowerAdz Corp.,
(518) 286-2200,
e-mail: bruce@poweradz.com;
Thomson Interactive Media,
(888) 425-1044,
e-mail: sales@thomson.com;
Zip2 Corp.,
(650) 429-4400;
e-mail: info@zip2.com.
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