Online Ad Sales: Get In The Game

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct, 2000 by Helen Berman

ONCE VIEWED PRIMARILY AS A VALUE-ADD TO PRINT SCHEDULES, WEB ADVERTISING IS FAST BECOMING AN INDEPENDENT, VIABLE REVENUE STREAM. STILL, LACK OF TRAINING IS PREVENTING SOME AD SALES STAFFS FROM GRABBING THEIR SHARE OF ONLINE DOLLARS. HERE'S HOW TO OVERCOME THE INERTIA.

It's and adage in the publishing industry that nothing happens until somebody sells something. Now, thanks to the Internet phenomenon, publishers have never before had so many "somethings" to sell advertisers.

Banners, buttons, links, pop-up ads, auctions, Webcasting sponsorships and online trade shows--the suitcase of options is ever expanding as publishers continue to chase multiple revenue streams on the Web. Unsure of what will and will not prove profitable, publishers say they are still in the experimental stage. But they will also tell you that their Web strategies are reaching new status. Consider Cahners Publishing: With 144 separate Web sites under its Cahners.com banner, the company has so far spent nearly $400 million--or about 45 percent of the company annual revenues--on its Internet strategy.

Or take a look at Southern Progress (a division of Time Warner), which is now "building out" its Web site, as publisher Steve Logan puts it, in hopes of attracting more online ad sales. "Initially, we thought our greater opportunity was in selling magazine subscriptions and books online," Logan says. But today's second-generation Web sites --filled with interactive elements, original content, games, advice sites, business-to-business exchanges and so on--now enable sales reps to grab scores of new ad opportunities, as well. "Where e-commerce was the buzzword a few years ago, the potential for online advertising is [growing] again," says Logan. "I think there's going to be a healthy mix of both."

Clearly, Web advertising is picking up speed. Cahners Research, for instance, points out a definite shift from print to online ad campaigns: In 1996, business-to-business advertisers spent 27 percent of their budgets on print advertising; that dropped to 23 percent in 1996. During the same period, advertisers upped their b-to-b online spending from 6 percent to 9 percent.

INTERNET ANXIETY

At the same time, though, few sales reps--or clients, for that matter--can be described as truly online savvy. Not long ago, Web advertising for publishers was a back-burner sales job, an add-on to a regular page buy. At Hachette Filipacchi, for instance, "we found that there was a tendency for traditional print ad sales people to perhaps consider Web advertising as merchandising or added value," says Don Perri, senior vice president, new media. "It's easier to sell the Web that way. Sales people think, 'It's not something I know, it's cute, advertisers are asking for it.' Their responsibility was only to drive pages anyway."

Today, sales reps are challenged not only to memorize and sell the Internet menu, but also to educate their advertisers. That can be a tall order in a relatively new medium like the Web. Like it or not, the Web is still subject to unreasonable expectations, advertiser skepticism and limited proof of effectiveness. Competition abounds, traffic is undependable, and audience comparisons are nearly impossible.

Moreover, relatively few ad sales people have been trained to alleviate these anxieties, or to deal with the Net's inherent selling challenges. Having grown used to the solid, standardized tools of print--CPMs, audit reports, reader surveys and publisher's statements--sales people now find themselves on the still-shaky ground of clicks, page views and limited browser data.

"I just lost an experienced, good sales person, who decided to retire rather than become re-educated to sell the Internet," says Bill Facinelli, president of Facinelli Media, a media rep firm specializing in business-to-business magazines. "We're all more comfortable and have a lot more selling tools with print."

How do Web publishers cope with the online sales task? Some simply outsource their sales. Companies like Hachette and Meredith Corporation have opted to have rep firms sell their Web space rather than use their in-house print sales people. In fact, Hachette had previously trained its print sales reps to sell online advertising space--only to lose those trained reps to dot-com companies desperate for their own sales teams.

Publishers, though, say outsourcing comes with its own challenges, particularly client conflict. "We've made a conscious effort to treat online advertising as a separate revenue stream, hut now we're trying to find ways to sell integrated packages," says Perri. "The challenge is in juggling who sells what, and who's making the call to which customer."

The other option, then, is to keep Web sales in-house. For sales reps and managers, that means transferring print sales skills into an online world. Ad sales people not only have to learn to demonstrate the intrinsic value of online advertising, but also help traditional print advertisers to understand that the Web can't, and shouldn't, be measured and valued by the same standards as magazines.