What Is Wrong With The World Today

I’d like to announce the death of a once thriving medium: Magazines

Today’s information market has claimed yet another victim as the swarms of RSS feeds and electronic syndication systems swoop in to pick at the bones. Unless you can read it on your mobile device, browser or widget: it’s useless.

Printed media such as newspapers, magazines, and even billboard advertising have all taken a massive hit since the dawn of internet marketing. The reach, cost efficiency and speed of these new formats have made the process of compiling, printing and distributing anything practically idiotic.

A dealer no longer can afford a $20,000 newspaper ad, Ewanick said. But if the dealer goes online with the same ad, he can gain instant feedback. - Mark Rechtin, Automotive News [1]

It’s no secret how this started. Thanks to free online classifieds like Craigslist, the marketing pyramid schemes and inflated readership statistics of the magazine industry began to crumble. With click-tracking software, advertisers and publishers are now able to get real statistics, in real time. They can judge the effectiveness of the campaign, or even a specific ad. With printed media distribution there is absolutely no way to determine how many ‘eyeballs’ see your ad.

The second major problem with the magazine industry is the disproportionate return on investment with marketing campaigns. Since there is no way to track actual readership beyond ’supposed’ subscription numbers, most magazines charge a flat rate for their ads. In this ancient model, you cannot equivocate each lead/sale to a dollar amount because there is no way to determine how many actually saw it to begin with. You must rely on the magazine to be honest and not ‘fudge’ the numbers as MANY publications have done in the past.

In the event that a company actually does wake up and smell the JavaScript, they are presented with a plethora of free, community maintained, turn-key solutions to cover everything from customer relations to e-commerce. The hardest part is convincing a 60 year old Boss or Manger that free software is good software.

To address the issue of analyzing your campaign’s cost effectiveness, Google Analytics provide a 3rd party, accurate representation of the traffic to any online publication. Paired with open source advertising software like OpenX, any company or website can provide their clients with accurate marketing data to help optimize their campaigns. It has never been easier or cheaper.