Sell more than just ad space

Scott Karp has been on a roll for a few months now. Today he makes a great case for media entities expanding beyond advertising unit sales and evolving into marketing services.

"The truth is that advertisers don't need media anymore ... at least not for traditional ad space ... and if they do, it's only to kick-start a viral marketing effort with an influential site ... or with a bit of search advertising. And then that’s it -- just a bit of paid media, and the social network kicks in. But companies do need marketing services firms."

Oh, yeah! Friends and consulting clients know I'm prone to lament in particular newspapers' abandonment of most true creative services for advertisers, what, decades ago now, right?

We sell two-dimensional space and pretend not to care what the advertiser puts there as long as it meets our decency standards and doesn't look too much like news.

If a mom-and-pop shop can't afford an agency to design an ad, oh, we'll do it, but few in our industry ever apply more than rudimentary creative touches to typesetting ads. Even fewer actually place a value on advertising creative services of any kind. And I can't name a newspaper (well, maybe one that is trying) that actually sells marketing services of the nature Karp describes -- including a willingness to help a business get its message to customers across multiple distribution channels and techniques.

I have less experience working with local broadcasters, but I think the traits carry to them, too.

Hey, business owner! When's the last time your local paper sold you a word-of-mouth starter program, or really good rich media creative development, or a managed search keyword campaign, or any kind of potentially viral marketing?

I thought so. These are professional services, billable at professional rates, which mainstream media tend to set aside in favor of selling chunks of ad space and/or time that are losing value online amid overwhelming inventory creation and competition.

What people will pay for message distribution online is going down. What people will pay for message development online is at least holding and maybe increasing.