Asked by an analyst about the relative pricing between print and online for help wanted, Tribune’s president Scott Smith said, “What we’ve done is aggressively raise online prices, keep print prices relatively stable. If you looked at a big market today, you’d see an average print ad costs about what an average online ad costs” (story).

Wow. While he’s talking about a specific set of comparable ads (help wanteds in print and online), this is still amazing. Not too long ago online was the “value-added” or “bonus” exposure that print, radio and TV sales reps tacked onto deals for their advertisers. Newspaper sales execs once famously faced an exquisite option: sell a $100,000 full page ad and call it a day, or develop, present and implement a creative online program with multiple placements, response methods and metrics to run over a period of time for one tenth the revenue. Not much of a choice for a leisure-loving sales rep.

It’s still a publisher’s duty to make smart choices about monetizing every impression according to value provided. The good news is that the market now recognizes the value of online media and is ready and able to pony up accordingly. The sad news for sellers of other media is that they took their dominant place in the world for granted for too long and now they’re having to catch up from an unfamiliar place at the bottom of the media buyer’s pile.

Online sellers: let’s remember that the worm can turn at any time. Keep providing value; keep demanding value; keep getting full value in return.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 11:52 pm and is filed under About Right Media, Publishers, Publisher Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.